A Climate Change with Matt Matern Climate Podcast

Satellites are essentially the only infrastructure that can observe what’s going on on the open ocean. There are all sorts of satellites. There’s optical satellites taking the pictures that you know from Google Earth. There’s radar from space, active beams that will find out what’s happening on the planet’s surface.

There’s infrared and light sensing satellites. There’s even radio listening satellites listening for radio signals. And so we’ve developed machine learning that helps classify what activities a ship’s engaged in at any particular time, and the AI is used then to determine whether those activities comply with regulations.

You’re listening to A Climate Change this is Matt Matern, your host. I’ve got a great guest on the program, Nick Wise. Nick has got involved in incredible organizations, both OceanMind, where he’s the founder and CEO, as well as co founder of Climate Trace. So I’m really excited to talk to Nick about both these organizations, which are doing incredible work. Welcome to the program, Nick.

Oh, thank you very much.

Well, tell us a little bit about kind of your origin story of what, what kind of drew you into the climate space to begin with, maybe going back to childhood, wherever it started.

Yeah, I mean, it started with the ocean. I’ve always been enthralled by the ocean, even as a child. I’m a scuba diver. I love seeing the life below the ocean, and I’ve been all around the world diving, so that’s been a passion of mine for some time. And of course, in recent years, I’ve seen the rapid decline of that life, and it’s been quite depressing, really, but the chance to contribute to marine conservation and then climate came almost by chance.

It was 2013 if I remember rightly, and I just made the move into a dream job in the space industry. It was my role to help create new software solutions that would grow the UK space economy and the ocean seemed an obvious place to apply that. So we met someone from Pew Charitable Trusts, and they challenged us to find ways for satellites to stop illegal fishing. And so the rest is really history.

Well, that’s, that’s a fascinating story. I know that satellites are used a lot in now, in monitoring climate. Tell us a little bit about how that, how that evolved from your first work to where you’re at now?

Sure, I mean, so the idea was satellites are essentially the only infrastructure that can observe what’s going on on the open ocean, and you can see so much from space now that the industry has changed significantly, even over the last five years, and the growth in both the amount of satellites and The capabilities of those satellites is quite astounding. And so there are all sorts of satellites. There’s there’s optical satellites taking the pictures that you know from Google Earth.

There’s radar from space, active beams that will find out what’s happening on the planet’s surface. There’s infrared and light sensing satellites. There’s even radio listening satellites listening for radio signals. And so you can get data from all of these different types of satellites. You can cross reference it, and you can understand what’s happening. Some of the data that we get is the tracking data from ships, so they’re little GPS pings that tell you where they are, so that they don’t run into each other.

And so we’ve developed machine learning that helps classify what activities a ship’s engaged in at any particular time, and the AI is used then to determine whether those activities comply with regulations. So when it comes to shipping and things that then helps us understand things like emissions and decarbonization.

Well, I mean, I was looking on both your websites and OceanMind and Climate Trace, and there’s just an enormous amount of breadth of the work that you’re doing on both of them. Maybe we could start with OceanMind. And when did you start that? And kind of what? What are the major purposes of that organization?

Yes, OceanMind’s major purpose is all around our theory of change, which is that most of the damaging human activity on the ocean is already regulated, and if we can help that be effectively enforced, we can fundamentally change our relationship with the ocean. We can reduce that damage and increase the sustainability.

So OceanMind has been focused very much on, how do we take all of this data capability technologies, use AI to understand it, and then use that to inform the regulators and the regulated industry so that they can behave better?

Essentially, so.

What are some of the successes that you’ve had at OceanMind in getting some of these regulations enforced?

So we’ve we’ve had successes all around the world. One of the key ones is we work with the UK Government on their blue belt program, with a monitoring partner for over four and a half million square kilometers of marine protected areas around all sorts of different locations, and that’s helped to protect biodiversity. Around 92% of the biodiversity that the UK is responsible for is found in those locations.

We’ve also worked in places like Thailand, and we’ve helped them build a system that allows them to understand all of the seafood that’s being imported into their country and then processed and exported into the global marketplace. That’s helped them verify over a billion dollars worth of tuna imports to make sure that they were fully legal. For example.

Well, those are great examples. I know you. You were involved in starting Climate Trace. Tell us a little bit about that organization, its origins and the work that it’s doing now as a Climate Trace.

Climate Trace began in about 2020, and it was the coming together of a few organizations, after a conversation between Gavin McCormick of what time, and the former US Vice President Al Gore, and the idea was, well, can we not use all of these capabilities to monitor every human caused greenhouse gas emission source on the planet?

That was the original ambition. And so the question was, oh, well, how? And so the conversation spread out across sister organizations from different portfolios and groups around the world to see, how do we actually find people with the relevant expertise to monitor these different areas? We, of course, understand what’s happening on the ocean. So it wasn’t a huge leap from us going from compliance activities to well, what are the emissions of those activities?

And so that’s sort of the origins of our engagement. And then Climate Trace has developed over the past five, six years or so, in order, like from this original spark of an idea to now genuinely monitoring over 600 million facilities around the world for their greenhouse gas emissions.

Yeah, I was looking at that. It was kind of mind blowing. 600 million different facilities is just yeah tough for the human mind to grasp. But and particularly, going from a standing start in 2019 2020, to today, and ramping it up that quickly is pretty amazing. So where do you see the organization going from here and and tell us about some of the successes in terms of getting this monitoring to make a difference, maybe in terms of shutting off or reducing some of these emissions?

Yeah, I mean, those two things are actually hand in hand, so we’ve done a fantastic job of finding out where emissions are and then starting to monitor them on an ongoing basis. So we’re publishing monthly emissions data for pretty much every major emitting source on the planet, and that allows us to inform policy, inform regulators and hold people accountable in everywhere where there’s major emissions. So going forwards, it now has to be about emissions reductions.

So how does our data inform emissions reduction strategies? How do we help people measure when they’ve chosen a strategy? Are they on target? Are they actually achieving what they expected? Another benefit of being able to do these measurements on a monthly basis is it means that you can try something, measure whether it’s been working, find out it’s not as good as you thought it was, or better maybe, and then try something else and rapidly iterate on emissions reductions, which is a problem I think we’ve had in the past.

People have stopped to think about what’s the best thing I could do and then started late, whereas now just start on something measure it, try something else, iterate our way to net zero, basically.

So are we seeing some of the major polluters, such as the oil companies, use the data that you’re generating and and change their practices?

So we’ve definitely seen some of the downstream companies from from some of the oil companies and so forth, making changes. So for example, in the steel industry or in heavy manufacturing, or places like that. So they’ve been able to use our data understand the competitive landscape.

I understand the benefits of actually reducing emissions and becoming a supplier of less emissions, because we’ve been helping people upstream or even downstream, who are buying from those people make better decisions in their purchasing practices. So if you’ve got one steel foundry that has a certain set of emissions, and another which has a similar cost but lower emissions. If you switch your buying practices, your scope three goes down immediately.

And that’s extremely beneficial for like car manufacturers, for example, who need a lot of steel, they can reduce their overall footprint really quite quickly just using some of these decision making tools.

So in terms of we’re seeing more climate related litigation these days, has have your tools been used in the litigation context to your knowledge?

Not to my knowledge, yet, but I imagine that that will be a thing, because the data is freely open and available to anyone to use, as long as they’ve got emissions reductions in mind anyway. And the idea is that we inform all varieties of people to try and create those emissions reduction strategies.

And litigation is a viable strategy, and it’s been seen to work in the European Union, there’s been some successful cases where not necessarily using the same data, but where the concepts around emission reduction have actually been upheld by law. And we’ve also seen the ICJ recent decision. So I feel like this is going to be a direction of travel.

Yeah, I would think that that there’s going to be a legal duty, or there is one already that exists for disclosure, certainly in the US and probably other securities markets around the world, of like, Hey, this is the amount of emissions that we are we are spitting out each month. And some people say that’s a problem.

We could be sued for this. It could have a massive amount of liability, because, I mean, as we know, Exxon had studied this back in the 80s and 70s, and had correctly projected the curve as far as CO two emissions and and it would cause problems. So do we see any of the major oil companies and other major polluters putting any of this data into their shareholder reports?

So personal opinion, I think they should be there is a responsibility there. Indeed, every company has a responsibility to understand the risks and liability that arise from their operations. And climate risk is one such risk. Environmental risk is another. These things are not nice to have. They are fundamental parts of the operating structure of the organization.

If the profile around those risks change, the operations are a threat. So the directors need to know this data. They need to understand what’s happening, they need to understand the trends. They need to understand what’s coming for them if they’re not making the right decisions, and so I do believe that the data needs to be used in those contexts. If it isn’t, at the moment, it’s difficult to know who’s using it, of course.

Okay, well, I would just kind of curious if you had heard reports of your data showing up in corporate reports or that type of thing, or analyst reports, so they don’t have to be employed by the company, but they are looking at this and saying, Okay, well, such and such company is emitting X amount of megatons of pollutants.

Yeah. So we certainly know that there are consultants who work with these companies who are using our data to inform on emissions of operations. There’s people we’re working with trying to work out scope three emissions, for example. So there’s, there’s quite a lot of movement in the direction of, can we use this Climate Trace data for carbon accounting, for supporting reporting and those sorts of things.

Well, kind of pivoting a little bit I saw recently that the Trump administration had was hiring a couple of guys from I think, the University of Alabama who were had used satellite data to question some of the findings regarding global warming and climate change. Are you familiar with those guys or their work, or people using satellite data to question the results or question you know climate change in general?

I’m not directly familiar for, familiar with them. I think the problem is that if you’re selective enough, you can use data to show many things, and the important thing is actually how wide the consensus is around opinions. So especially in this era of AI, where it can spout out almost anything and everything is unreliable.

The question really is, therefore, can people verify the sources? Can people back things up? Can people understand so I don’t foresee that we’re going to see a lot of meaningful challenges to any of the data that’s already out there, because there’s so much consensus around it, so much analysis, so much that’s gone into understanding the truth of it, right?

It seemed as though, when I was reading about it is that, yes, you could pluck a statistic here or there and kind of create a pseudo scientific argument, but, but that, as you said, 99% of climate scientists are have a consensus that these changes are very real, at least the major trends of all of this stuff, you may quibble about, maybe things on The margins, but the major trends are are agreed upon.

Yeah, absolutely, and that’s why the world has made the commitments it has. You know, governments don’t come to these situations without there being important and meaningful data behind them, right?

And I mean, when you see that the big oil companies and the petro states all admit that climate change is real. I mean, it’s not like they did that very quickly. They denied it for a long time, but eventually even they came to admit it. You know, I guess I see as a cause for concern is that a lot of these major oil companies are still drilling and doing a lot of work to to increase petroleum production in in years to come. What, what is your data kind of useful in, in maybe trying to slow that train down a bit?

I think one of the really interesting elements from the data is actually the growth in renewables. So there may well be some growth in fossil fuels still there, but actually the fact that renewables are now cheaper to deploy and cheaper to manage and more convenient actually means that for many locations that are looking for new energy sources, these are the right answers. So while I recognize that that companies have aspirations, that doesn’t mean that the world is going in the right, in the direction for them, right?

I mean, it’s it’s telling that even a state as conservative as Iowa now produces 60% of their power through wind, and they were kind of pushing back on some of the current administration’s regulations, or trying to slow that process down, because they’re obviously getting a lot of benefit from renewables.

Where do you where do you see, kind of the future of Climate Trace, and it’s it’s grown incredibly quickly and and the work that it’s doing is is broad ranging, but what are the next steps in terms of use of AI and use of this data by by different organizations? Where do you see this moving?

So I think for Climate Trace, we need to be accurate, we need to be complete, and we’re doing pretty good jobs there already, but we need to be actionable. And so I think our key future is while still doing the regular and rapid monitoring, we need to also be able to offer rapid reduction strategies and techniques that people can trial and then show them how to monitor those as they go along.

So I think the future is likely to be around these areas. But of course, we decide our roadmap on an annual basis, and we make agile decisions as we go to work out where we need so in reality, where we’ll go is, well, the world needs us to go in order to be most useful.

Do you see the oil companies using this data and and trying to reduce their emissions? I mean, I you know you’ve read, I’ve read about Exxon trying to reduce their methane emissions to a certain extent, and doing better than some of the small operators are doing, whereas maybe some of the operators in the Persian Gulf are not doing a great job, even though they have a tremendous amount of resources. They could do it, but they’re just not taking. Making the effort. Same thing for Russia.

I think for me, the important thing is that the data is there and people can use it. And I would love it if every organization was using the data to understand what they can do to reduce emissions, and that they committed to doing that. I think it would be fantastic if oil companies were using the data and and could show using the data that they’ve made strides in the activities that they’re they’re committing to. There’s not so much of that at the moment, but maybe that’ll maybe that’s coming. Who knows?

Well, I think obviously the first step is having the data in order to be able to use it. And so there’s transparency there. Because obviously up until this point in time, there’s been opaque layers that people were just guessing at emissions, and now people now know what they really are. So kudos to you and the rest of your compatriots that that created this tell tell us a little bit about what this entails, because I was kind of blown away by the scope of what Climate Trace is doing technologically.

Yeah, so Climate Trace is a coalition the sort of 12 founding members that are the group that are really the core, and it’s a fairly loose and agile governance structure. So we kind of set goals, and we’re all trying to move towards those goals, but we’re individually making our contributions. So so it is, we’re able to go faster and more agile in that way, and then there’s hundreds of organizations in the orbit of the 12 that are providing data or support or advice or testing or feedback that help us to get better and more accurate, to help us to work out new ways of doing things, To be more efficient and reduce costs.

So it is, it is a huge global effort, as you say, of organizations and people, individuals all around the world actually committed to this concept of documenting all human caused greenhouse gas emission sources. So the actual scale of the operations is vast. Each individual organization, with this huge amounts of processing on data, applies new and interesting techniques, does research in order to come up with the best ways of doing things, these then all have to come together. There is a central team that can build the platform, create storage full of the data, make it available to people.

That is a huge logistical exercise. All by itself, that amount of data and being able to make it available and conveniently to people is super hard. And then tying all of that together, the people behind the scenes who are actually making sure that everything lands where it needs to land at the right time. So the effort is huge, as you say, but it’s a really smooth, running, efficient machine in the way that it’s been set up.

Yeah, it’s fascinating. It’s kind of like a new model for organizational development as well as you don’t hear, I certainly, I don’t know of too many organizations that have so many moving parts that are actually effective. I mean, you hear about, you know, bureaucracies having lots of different inputs and not being efficient. So kudos to you guys for doing it efficiently.

Tell us a little bit about the technological wheels behind this. How many satellites are involved, how many you know, super computers, that kind of thing, and and maybe a little bit about how AI has shifted what you’re doing and how you may see it evolving as we go forward.

Yeah. So each organization is responsible for its own compute and and the data that they use and and their partners. So we have people using all of the different cloud providers that that the major ones that are out there. We probably have 1000s of nodes of compute that take place. We have terabytes upon terabytes of storage needed for all of the data.

There’s probably hundreds of databases, but I haven’t actually seen a count, and the infrastructure needed to pull of these things together is fairly substantial as well, not to mention the testing pipelines to try and verify the data and make sure it all fits together. So substantial amounts, I would say, computing, storage, cloud facilities. But I think the question about AI is quite interesting, because, of course. Yes, AI these days tends to mean sort of the more modern, generative AI type things.

But actually AI is in like a pretty ancient field. It’s been around for decades, and we’re all using algorithms that some of the algorithms that we even use in OceanMind date back a good 40 years. But the principles behind them are really important principles to document real world understanding that can then be supported by some of these new models of learning. So one of the things that we really can’t have, particularly in OceanMind’s work where we’re talking about law enforcement, is things like false positives. We can’t have the computer say something that is wrong, so we have to put in place all sorts of techniques to try and avoid those false positives.

Because when you’re talking at scale, even what you might consider a really low false positive rate can result in an absolutely overwhelming workload for the human operators, who then need to go off and investigate every every incidents that you suggested non compliance. So we pull algorithms from across the entire spectrum of what’s considered AI machine learning, the entire field, in order to come up with amalgamations that are accurate enough for law enforcement.

Yeah, tell us a little bit about that. I know you’re involved in a lot of phishing regulation. How is phishing regulation now become more effective because of the work that you’re doing.

So the key thing is that it gives people insights into what’s happening in their jurisdiction that was very difficult to get before they’re even 1015, years ago, you would be more likely to use a patrol boat that went out and traveled a set pattern in order to try and find people who are breaking the law in your waters. And obviously that is easy to work around if you’re one of these criminals, and predictable and expensive, so the ability to use satellites has been a game changer.

The challenge then came that there was too much data to understand. There’s too like, too big a space and too little ability for humans to pull what was needed out. And so that’s why the algorithms were needed to understand what was happening, either in an image or based on tracking data, and be able to boil that down into across this entire fleet of 20,000 vessels, which ones are doing things that need most attention, and therefore, we’ll get our human operators, of which we have a limited number, to focus on those ones of highest risk in order to be able to use their time on enforcement, rather than use their time looking at dots on a page, trying to work out which one they should worry about.

And so are a lot of different national governments using your data, and how can it be actionable, kind of in real time. Because, as you said, these fishing boats that are fishing illegally can move quickly and and probably evade detection fairly easily.

So you’re, you’re quite right that the data itself is not enough. There is then a process behind that that is what’s called enforcement. And so one of the key features of OceanMind is not that we just provide data or tools or capability, is that we also provide the training that then is the so what?

So you have this information, you’ve learned that something’s happened, what is the best technique in that particular circumstance, based on that country’s own unique context, because every country has different rules, every country has different features within their environment. Every country has different culture. So within all of those different factors, what is the best thing to do next? And that might be, catch the vessel when it gets to a port.

It might be send out a boat, if it’s if it’s a certain capability, it might be contact the flag state for the vessel. It might be using your own facilities and resources to do something about it. You know, it might be education, for example. Some sometimes these activities happen because people don’t understand the rules.

So helping them understand better can drive faster change than trying to find people, for example. So it’s all about finding the right action in the right situation and then making sure that that action can. Can follow from the data that you provide. So that chain is really important?

Yeah, I guess. So it was kind of visualizing in terms of, are the satellites able to say, like, really take such great pictures that the boat is identifiable? And so when the ship comes in to harbor, hey, we’ve got the, we’ve got the pictures of you doing something illegal. So you’re you’re in trouble.

So that is possible, but very, very rare. So you can get very high resolution images, and if the boats are certainly big enough, you can get images that help you identify the boat based on what’s on deck and its layout and its colors and all that kind of stuff so entirely possible, but very rare. More often than not, you’re relying on things like the tracking data from the vessel, or indicators that suggest that the vessel did something you need to know more about so you get an inspector on the vessel, and that inspector will open up the ship’s log. They will look at the sensors on the ship.

They will find the information that is there, physically in place. They’ll interview the crew, that kind of thing. So it is very rare, if ever that a situation will occur where you’ll use some of this data in court and show that something bad happened much more likely as you use the data for probable cause you got on the boat and then you found all the other evidence that you needed that would then allow you to go to court.

What you need is a TV show to track this down, to kind of get public involvement, you know, like a CSI ocean or whatever.

Well, there’s Ian Urbina, if you’re not familiar with his outlaw ocean series. I strongly recommend it to everyone, because it does document very well the sorts of things that go on on the ocean and the lawlessness and supply chains and things of that nature. So I can definitely recommend looking into that.

Have you, have you contributed to the show at all in terms of, do they use your data to to track stuff down?

We can be helpful, but we obviously can’t talk about anything specific.

Okay, well, outlaw ocean, everybody check it out. So yeah, it’s that’s fascinating stuff. And I guess one of the questions is, are we, are we making progress on managing our fisheries better? Because I’ve certainly heard from guests on the show in the past that we’re not maybe doing a great job, and if we don’t do a much better job, we’re going to wipe out or greatly diminish our fisheries.

So I think with the marine environment and fisheries just less with climate, we are making progress. Problem is the progress is not fast enough, and it’s not outpacing the damage that we as humans are doing. And so the situation is continually getting worse. We just need to do more, and we need to do more faster, and that’s a question of resources and and reach really,

yeah, I don’t see enough probably, you know, public outcry as to this type of behavior and trying to stop it. And what are your thoughts on that? And I would imagine that the data that you’re producing is is kind of the foundation for creating that wave. How? Do you see it kind of rolling out to the next level, where, you know, can be used to generate greater public awareness?

I think there’s been many attempts to great to raise public awareness. I think the challenge is finding the message that’s going to stick in people’s minds. And I think that the climate movement has this challenge as well. How do you tell the message of something that’s terribly complicated, that everyone does rely on, but doesn’t really impinge on their daily lives much of the time? How do we get the message across that these things are desperately important and and, you know, how do people prioritize those against the impacts that they feel day to day from everything else that’s happening in economies and in local contexts?

So definitely a very challenging one, and I would challenge the media sector to to think about this and work work it out, because we don’t have enough stories. We don’t have enough people saying what, what might happen if we don’t do something about it. And that’s what people need to know.

Well, tell us, as a scuba diver, I’ve, I’ve done a little scuba diving. And I’ve always enjoyed it as somebody who’s maybe been a lot more active in that area. You said that you saw changes over time. What are some of those changes that are, you know, readily obvious.

Well, I think the most obvious is the bleaching of coral reefs. So there are coral reefs where you when I was a bit young, you would go diving, and they were absolutely full of life. They were colorful, they were full of sounds. So you just knew that they were healthy and thriving. But today, you know, some of those reefs, there’s no life.

They’re just white, bleached, there’s no, there’s no health left in them, and small outposts of life, perhaps, but, but not anything to the scale that they used to be. And you know, this is this devastating, devastating the way this is happening, and it’s it’s almost out of sight because it’s beneath the ocean. It’s not something that’s widely seen and understood, but there are stories that that are out there. They just, they just don’t hit home, as well as being there and seeing it with your own eyes.

Right. In terms of measuring, say, ocean temperatures and things of that nature. Are you doing that as part of either organization.

We’re not directly, no some of the outcomes of that, like changes in fish, stock locations where fishing happens and so forth. We can see those things from the data, but we’re not directly doing that measurement. But you can get measurements from the satellites from the government satellites, European Space Agency in particular, you can get time series data. They publish that it’s get the oceans getting hotter and hotter.

There’s plenty of data being published on the acidification of the ocean. It’s getting more and more acid, so or acidic, I should say. And so these stress factors on the ocean clearly increasing. The only way that we can help things to thrive and survive is to maintain that biodiversity, maintain the life in the ocean, and we are extracting that life at a greater and greater rate of knots.

So in terms of hurricanes and major storms that we’re seeing on the oceans, are you tracking that data? And is that something that you’re seeing increasing as a result of global warming?

Yeah, and we certainly see the impact of those things. So one of the things that we do see is changes in shipping behavior as they try and avoid storms, changes in fishing patterns as there are storms. Damage to infrastructure, fishing villages, for example, in coastal communities, these things are increasing, particularly where they used to be, things like mangroves that could stop some of the storm surge.

With those no longer there, there’s a lot more damage being done to places. So it’s the outcomes that we see, and it is increasing. There’s no doubt about that. There’s plenty of data to show the increase in storms, the increase in severity in storms, and the effect that has on the global supply chain.

Well, I saw that some of the work that you’re doing is with the marine industry and insurance, and that some of the damages resulted from resulting from climate change and and advising them on on how to mitigate those changes. Maybe you can talk to us about about that?

Yeah, well, I mean, the insurance sector is the sort of silent sector that underpins the whole of the rest of the economy. There’s very little that goes on without some form of insurance. And I think many people have now experienced the fact that insurance is, is, is, insurance is, is is retreating. There are many things that are not insurable, things like wildfires or flooding or things in many locations you can’t get insurance for these things for anymore.

As as things increase on the ocean, as storms increase, as geopolitical instability increases, and people have to reroute to different locations. They didn’t reroute before as they pass through marine protected areas. You know, all of these activities carry risk, and at some point that risk might arise as a claim to an insurer, resulting in losses and and too many unplanned of those can be quite devastating.

Hence the reason why many things become uninsurable. Our economy can only continue if we if we can have insurance, and that means we need to make sure that insurance is is empowered with the most up to date real time risk data that they can get. And so that’s one of the. Things we’re aiming to achieve.

So are you contracting with a lot of insurance companies to for them to get your data, or are you working with the insureds to kind of help them understand their risks better and mitigate them by themselves?

We’re mostly working with intermediaries so we can put our data into the platforms that these all these other groups use, so that it becomes available within the risk management tools that they’re already using. So we don’t want to go out and sort of build a whole new system and compete in a new way. We want to just make sure that our data is available for use by everyone who needs it.

So are you seeing that as a growth area for your organization is to supply more data to the insurance market so that they can better measure risk and maybe mitigate their behavior to reduce risk?

Yes, it’s certainly part of the strategy, I think, with the plan for the organization, on one hand is to make sure that we’re working with law enforcement to catch the folks who are breaching the regulations. But on the other side is, how do we drive information to places that cause people to not want to breach regulations in the first place? And insurance is one of those sectors.

So yes, we can help them reduce their costs and have better understanding of risk, but actually insurers and their pricing models and how they ensure actually drives real world behavior. People will change their behavior to reduce their premium, like dash cams in cars, for example. And so the idea is that, on one hand, we can help drive better behavior and generate income, of course, and on the other hand, we can do more of the impactful sort of more philanthropic work that then delivers change in the world.

Can you give us an example of how that a real life example of how your data is helping change behavior that would, you know, improve sustainability?

Yeah, well, I can give an example of the aspiration the actual change horizon time is a bit longer than now. But the idea is that as we provide information around, for example, routing through a marine protected area where there’s an entirely reasonable alternative route to take, if the insurers increase a risk premium as a result of the potential for higher losses due to running a ground in marine protected area, for example, then ships will will be able to route away from that area, and in order to reduce that operating cost overall

And so we get the benefit of not having shipping through the marine protected area, and the shipper has the benefit of reduced insurance premiums. Admittedly, they went up because of the risk, but, but, but that is the sort of activity that we hope to drive.

So in terms of current behavior, are ships allowed to go through marine protected areas? And if they do, do, they face some kind of fine?

No. So underneath the Law of the Sea, ships generally have right of transit through open ocean and a large percentage of national waters as well. So in general, the ships can go where they want to go. And so governments have to put in place specific rules if they want to create shipping lanes or channels or or routes where they want ships to go somewhere else, or the industry has to have incentives to make different choices.

Let’s say, in the UK, you were talking about a fairly substantial area that was marine protected. Are ships allowed to go through there, or is the UK created regulation saying, hey, in our national waters, I think it’s what 200 miles out you you have to, you know, behave differently.

So in general, there aren’t rules of that nature, or substantial rules of that nature. There are selected shipping lanes and there are selected places where ships can go, but they’re not necessarily strictly considering the marine protected areas.

They’re more about safety at sea so but in some of the UK’s overseas territories, they have indeed looked at traffic, traffic planning and shipping lanes that will avoid the actual vulnerable ecosystems in those marine protected areas and take some. Time for regulations to come through, but the idea is that those regulations will be put in place.

So are you also tracking, say, the amount of emissions that ships have, and have you seen any shipping companies change their behavior to reduce emissions?

So we are, of course, tracking the emissions from from all of the ships. And as yet well, so companies are working on emissions reduction. The International Maritime Organization has put in place targets and requirements that their members need to meet and that their members are the majority of the world.

Represent the majority of the world’s countries that drive shipping and and so the industry is moving towards emissions reduction, and it’s, it’s looking at things and doing a relatively good job, actually, of committing to doing emissions reduction. It’s just very hard, because you have all of these ships, they’ve already been built to burn a certain type of fuel. That fuel is not great. So it’s all about new ships having new fuels that are less emissions.

It’s about developing new types of fuel that reduce emissions better, and an incremental progress that accelerates towards 2050 so the industry is definitely making progress, but the expectation is the progress gets faster and faster.

Yeah, do you see some of the shipping companies using your data or partnering with the shipping companies to to supply them with the data and or, you know, maybe publicly shame them if they’re moving in the wrong direction.

So we try to avoid publicly shaming. Is that that’s not necessarily our position. We try and work with people to actually make positive changes. So it’s much more about supporting them through the process of working out what direction to go in. There are definitely organizations, shipping organizations, that use our data and and look at it and help with their decision making.

Many of the shipping companies have their own data as well because they obviously measure directly the emissions coming from their their ships. So we can help support with the data that we have, particularly historical and rapid turnaround data to cross reference with what they have. But equally, we can help with things like forward planning, so using the models to look forward rather and look at different scenarios rather than looking at the past.

So looking ahead, what technological advances or innovations are you most excited about in in this area of marine enforcement and emissions tracking?

I’m gonna have to be really boring on this question and say I’m not not looking forward to innovations. I am looking forward to putting the innovations we already have into play. So my position on this is that we already have all of the tools we need around the world in order to significantly reduce emissions in a fairly short space of time.

What we’re not doing is using those tools, and we actually often, in fact, use the idea of new innovations, creating new tools as a distraction from putting in place things we already know work. So my ideal is that we actually settle down and get into the really boring phase of implementation and take the tools we’ve got and actually use them for the jobs that they’ve been designed well,

I think that’s well said. I think that could be done in really across the environmental space is that we know what needs to be done, use less be more efficient. All these things are boringly simple. Of course, there’s potential for technological innovation that will change stuff, but the stuff that we already have is sufficient for the job?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there will be innovation, and we will see things like generative AI, finding new strategies that we didn’t previously think of, or or opening up new pathways that will happen. But that’s not the game changer. The Game Changer is to take what we already know and use it because we know it will be effective.

So what, What do you say to the listeners out there? How can they support the work that you’re doing and and the work that your organizations are doing?

I think number one, spread the word, because the more people that understand the global situation and the direction that we need to move in, the choices that we as societies need to make, then those people being more informed means that, in general, we can make better decisions. I think anyone can go and look at the data that’s in Climate Trace and see whether it helps inform things that.

They do so, whether it’s at their work, can they find things where the Climate Trace data allows them to make choices and reduce emissions for themselves or their supply chain, or even at home? Can you use the data to understand what’s going on around you and speak up for things that are bad? Local coal power stations, for example, causing local pollution, and being able to use the data on Climate Trace to help put together the case to do something about it. That’s definitely something people can do.

And when it comes to the marine space, understand where the fish that you’re eating comes from. And there are plenty of tools around to help you make sustainable choices. So please help inform yourself and and choose sustainable fish.

A great message, yeah, when I heard about this project that that was being created, the Climate Trace. And I thought, wow, that’s that’s an amazing kind of moonshot type idea. And, and the fact that it’s come together so quickly, and, and you guys have had such an impact already, is phenomenal.

And particularly in this day and age where you see the US government in particular, walking back from its commitments to monitor the ocean and through data analysis, it’s it’s great to have a private organization that is doing this work so that We have the data necessary to make better choices.

I think it’s really important to recognize that this idea of governments changing and walking forwards and walking back is is a constant, like the main constant in government life, is government changes, and therefore policies change and and where you end up changes.

And so it’s key that we have continuity of data and insights. Is also key that we recognize that and understand when to be pushed back against and when to flow forwards in a different direction, and how to take advantage of these things, because governments, the way that they work isn’t changing, and so we need to be able to work within that framework.

Yeah, I kind of look at it as the best approach. With some of the current governments, maybe like a Tai Chi, you’re just kind of working around them to get the things done that are necessary. And they may be trying to be an impediment, but rather than fighting them tooth and nail on every thing you know, I appreciate the work that you’re doing just kind of taking matters into your own hands and saying, Hey, let’s do what we can do without government’s help, which is monitor what’s actually happening And then let decision makers that are outside of government make better decisions?

Yeah, and I think that idea of of Tai Chi and and working with the movements of the world is the key thing, because there’ll always be these movements. And so recognizing how you can make progress in the face of changes, is the important thing?

Well, it’s kind of fascinating. I’ve seen this theme developing over the last year, in particular, that insurance is is becoming such a driving factor in people waking up to the to need to make changes, because every average Joe and Jane is being hit with massive insurance increases, as we have been across the US and I assume in other areas of the world as well. And there’s nothing like a cold slap in the face by a multi $1,000 insurance bill to like say, Hey, what the hell is going on here? And as you said, maybe not even being able to insure your home if you live along the coast or live in a wildfire area, which is kind of unprecedented.

Yeah, and I think that our global economy has only got to be here because of insurance. Insurance was was developed hundreds of years ago to help create the kinds of scaled activities that ended up where we are today. And so without insurance, we’re not going to be able to continue working the way that we do. There won’t be this global capability, because you can’t take the risks you have to take in order to move goods from one side of the world to the other, for example.

And so globalized supply chains don’t work without insurance the way that we’ve set up. Our food systems don’t work without insurance. You know, we’ve got, we’ve got all of. These, these economic systems, they can’t work without insurance. So now that insurance is at the forefront saying we’ve got a problem, we may well see quite a bit more movement.

Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s certainly a multi trillion dollar business, so they have the corporate power to shake things up, but maybe more importantly, the people power behind individuals getting hit with huge insurance bills or having no insurance, or being wiped out by these natural disasters, I think, wakes people up and no people in California are talking about, wow, certain people who got hit by the fires just didn’t have any insurance. And that’s like unthinkable that that people in a developed country can’t get insurance for their home.

Yeah, and is worse than than it sounds as well, because many of the people did have insurance. It’s just that the impact was so great, the insurance became invalid. There was no way to cover that scale of cost. So you can’t insure something that is a certainty.

And it is a certainty that we’re going to see increased damage from the effects of global warming, increased severe weather, increased disruptions in global supply chains, these things are going to happen, so you can’t, you can’t insure against them when you know they’re going to happen. And that’s part of the problem, right?

As as an attorney, we see that there are certain things insurance companies just will not insure. They just will not insure a certain risk, because, as you said, there are certainty. So, insurance companies aren’t stupid. They they’re not going to insure a risk that is almost a certainty to occur, so that that is an existential problem that we face. So we better wake up to this one.

Well, thank you so much, Nick for being on the program, amazing work that you’re doing at both these organizations, Climate Trace and OceanMind. Everybody should check those out, follow them on social media as well as get involved. And As Nick said, wake up and, you know, look at the emissions that are occurring in our in our neighborhoods and where you live. And let’s, let’s check out those sites that Nick is running and has spent considerable energy creating, so that we can, we can inform our policy holder policy makers like I assume that there are tons of policymakers out there that just don’t even know about these resources.

And that’s right. And so helping us spread the word, pointing out where they are, we even ran an exercise locally where we took the data into a local school and had school children make decisions around what they would do in terms of local emissions reductions based on the data. You know, it is entirely possible for people to use use use our data and help it to inform their decisions.

And even if you are looking for something to write to your local representative about, you can use the data to underpin arguments that you might want to make. So there’s this uses of all kinds, especially those we haven’t imagined, that you can put the data too well.

Fantastic work, Nick and kudos to you and your team, and we’ll be watching and following you in in the years to come, because I think this is a crucial piece of the puzzle. So you know, thank you and look forward to following you as you go forward.

Thanks very much, Matt, it’s been a great pleasure.