Six Years to Change: The Economics of Climate Action with Paul Ekins

In this episode of Real Zero, hosts Professor Hugh Montgomery and Dr. Daniel Grant speak with Professor Paul Ekins, an expert in environmental economics and energy systems, about the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels and the economic challenges we face in achieving this goal.

They discuss the stark reality that we have just six years left before exceeding the carbon budget for the 1.5°C target — and why fossil fuel companies continue to prioritize profit over sustainability. The conversation dives into the political, financial, and social inertia keeping us dependent on fossil fuels and explores practical steps individuals can take to create change.

Key takeaways include how switching your bank accounts, investments, and pensions away from fossil fuel-supporting institutions can send a powerful market signal, and how carbon pricing and government policies are crucial levers for systemic change. Discover how millions of small actions can make markets jump — and why every fraction of a degree matters.

Tune in to learn how to wield your financial choices, voting power, and everyday decisions to help divert the global climate supertanker toward a brighter future.

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Transcript

0:13

Hi, welcome to the real zero podcast with me, Daniel Grant and. Hugh Montgomery. Thank you for having me, Dan. Very welcome, Hugh. not so bad. Slightly distressed by the climate data, but that's sort of a daily event for me nowadays. But, yeah, what about yourself? You been good? I have been good, thanks very much. Yeah, it's been a nice week. I think if you remember when we first spoke on our podcast, when we started it, we spoke about a number of things which can contribute to climate change. One of the things was obviously fossil fuels and where they come from. Yes. And, uh, well, that leads us to today's guest. So, Hugh, who have we got? Yeah, so, you're right, what we're talking about today is, is where these greenhouse gases come from. And we've talked about some of it is water vapour, some of it are funny chemicals we make, but the bulk of these come because we're burning these fossil fuels that have trapped carbon for so long. They come from these fossil fuels, they, the greenhouse gases, they come from oil, gas and coal in particular. And we've got with us, An expert in energy systems, but environmental economics. So how does the money flow? related to fossil fuels. What harms it do? How might we change things? So, that's Professor Paul Eakin, my colleague from UCL. So Paul, tell us about yourself. Who are you? What do you do? Yeah, well, my title, uh, thanks to you for the introduction. My title is Professor of Resources and Environmental Policy. And as you say, I'm an economist specializing in environment and resources. And that means particularly trying to understand the economics around the energy transition, around moving away from these fossil fuels that you've already name checked. It's just about the biggest priority in the world today. But it's a struggle as we will no doubt explore during this podcast because we're all dependent on fossil fuels. Many people say we're addicted to fossil fuels. And yet there are alternatives. The alternatives are no longer as expensive as they once were. So we could move away from fossil fuels much faster. Then we currently are and, I guess we'll explore some of the, ways in which we can do that over the course of the next few minutes. Great. Well, I mean, could I actually, now that you've raised it, could we just start with that because there is this sort of myth or meme out there, isn't there? That, well, you know, we can't do without fossil fuels, we're all co dependent, it's not our fault. But you're saying that actually these other technologies, for generating clean electricity are available, and are, if I've heard you correctly, cheaper in some regards than Well, in some respects they are, in certain parts of the world. Certainly in the UK they are, if that's what we're talking about, but also in the very sunny parts of the world, because of the cost of photovoltaic cells. Has come down by a factor of 10 over the last eight years or so. And they are now in many countries, the cheapest form of electricity available and the markets are waking up. So last year it was twice as much investment. in these renewables as there was in fossil fuels. And I guess there's something for everyone, isn't there, in renewables? I mean, Norway's got hydroelectric, which some people have got. We've got solar where it's sunny. You've got wind where it's blowy. You've got big tidal drops where you've got big time drops. The Camel Valley, 8. 4 meters every tide. You've got big waves in some places coming in across. You've got hot rocks. But given that we've got to make that transition, right? We, we've, as you say, we're, we're really stuffed if we don't, Stop burning these fossil fuels so they're so dangerous. How do we make that transition then to something that might be a bit more expensive? You say in some parts of the world maybe it's much cheaper to burn coal. What's stopping us doing that? Well I think there are two or three answers for that. The first is that we're creatures of habit. We know how to do fossil fuels. We've been doing them a very long time. And especially in countries where markets are not very well developed, where the finance flows are difficult, where perhaps they've got a high interest rate, high cost of capital, they actually find it difficult to make the investment in alternatives. They've got people who understand coal fired power stations, and they can build coal fired power stations. That sort of expertise, you don't need it for a wind turbine, you don't need it for solar photovoltaics, you need a different kind of grid. So there's a capacity issue, as well as, a market readiness issue, and there's a huge difference in the cost of capital across different countries. So perhaps in Switzerland and Germany, if you borrow money to make these things, you might be paying 3%. In many parts of sub Saharan Africa, if you borrow money to make these things, you may be paying 15%. Wow. And that, Makes all the difference to these technologies renewables technologies, which are very capital intensive Well, Dan perhaps I'll get you to come back to pick that up with Paul because that sounds like something we should explore later Because if that's a barrier, I guess we all have to understand how we as individuals might help change that Whether it's by voting or by what we do with our money, but can I just start would you be right Dan if I pick? Up with Paul. Yeah, please. Please go for it Paul. I mean Could you just give us a sense for, I know that the answer is we can't burn any more fossil fuel, but as you say, at the moment we've got to have a transition. How much, for the Paris one and a half degrees target, we, you know, in 2010 in Paris the deal was we would try, the world would try to limit the 10 year rolling average temperature rise to 1.5 above pre industrial. How much fossil fuel have we left that we are allowed to burn before we burn through that limit? And how quickly are we burning through it? Well, we're burning through it very quickly. So, currently, global emissions are about 50 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. And we've got about 300 billion left for a 50 percent chance of keeping to 1.5. So we've got six years left and then we're not allowed to burn any more fossil fuels. That's a target. Yeah. Okay. That's a big challenge. Are the fossil fuel companies then Stopping. I mean, presumably they know this. So they're going, okay, we're going to stop burning coal. We're going to stop burning gas. We're going to stop drilling for more stuff. We're just going to stop exploring, right? Presumably that's what they're doing, is it? Well, unfortunately not. If they were doing it, given that they're so rich and given that they could afford to make these investments, uh, in the countries that are currently quite difficult, uh, things would look much brighter, but they're still investing, a trillion. a year more or less or half a half a trillion a year in further investments in fossil fuels the latest data from the international energy agency Says that they're investing just four percent of their investments into renewables And that means that 96 percent from those companies is still going into fossil fuels, but they're not exploring for more They are very much exploring for more. That's what a lot of these investments are and there's plenty down there So, we're not going to run out of these things. We somehow have to stop the richest, the richest industry that the country, that the world has ever known. We have to stop them doing this stuff. So, I mean, Dan asked me an interesting question. I mean, Dan, when we did our first podcast, you said to me, why is it that companies, people, and governments aren't acting? And I said, well, Partly it's they don't have the scientific knowledge or understanding or framework. Partly it's ignorance. Partly it's a feeling of disempowerment. What's, if you were the CEO of a big oil company, why is it at the moment that you are going, well, burn, baby, burn? We're going to keep exploring for more. We know that we're going to bust through our degrees. We know the consequences, but we're going to keep doing it. What's driving them? Are they psychopaths or are they ignorant or political lens where they won't believe it? Why are they still doing it? They are people who believe they have to maximize the financial return to their shareholders. They can make probably between seven and 10 percent if they invest in renewables, which in most industries is a reasonable return. They can make 20 percent of current oil prices, oil and gas prices, if they invest in fossil fuels. And they're not prepared to give up that extra 10%. But, I mean, you and I, faced with, we make a bunch of change quite quickly, but then the entire world goes down in anger, our children die and there isn't an economy, would go, yeah, maybe I'll make the choice to forego my 20%. Why will they not do that? Is it because they've got a political lens or is it because they are psychopaths or is it because they don't understand it? I'm struggling here. They certainly understand it. There's very good evidence now that the major western oil companies have been doing research into climate change for at least 50 years. And they have understood what the natural world implications are of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, certainly for as long as that. No, they are part of, a money mad system and they blame their shareholders, of course. And of course, the shareholders are mainly big institutions. They're not mainly people like you and me. They're mainly, they may be our pension funds who will be investing, there. And the pension funds want to get 20 percent rather than 7 to 10%. And so they continue to make the money. And in the United States, particularly, there are now laws being put into place by Republican lawmakers saying that even if financial institutions want to move away from financing fossil fuels, they're making it illegal for them to do so. And you once described to me the Oil industry and, and all fossil fuel industry and I forget you were quoting someone I think as what it looks like when an AI goes rogue. Can you run me through that again? Because I thought that was a great, Yeah, this was, part of the Reith Lectures, which are a series of lectures every year, very much the flagship lectures of the BBC. A couple of years ago they had Professor Stuart Russell, who's a professor at University of California, Berkeley, talking about AI, which was pretty prescient, given everything that's happened in the last two years in that subject. And I was very struck that he made the remark That, if you want to know what an AI system that goes rogue looks like, you look at the fossil fuel industry because they have a single objective, which is to make money and they are prepared to pursue that objective no matter what. That's all they're in business to do, to make as much money as possible. And that's what they're going to do. And that's very much a description of what an AI system is when it goes rogue, it has an objective and it doesn't matter what they. Other consequences, maybe it pursues it. And I wrote to him after the Reith lectures and I said, This is really interesting. Um, you know, can you give me a reference or something? He said, well, in the AI world, it's absolutely commonplace. This, this kind of insight that, that if you want to, if you, if you want to see what happens when AI systems don't have the kinds of constraints around them that they need. Look at the fossil fuel industry. Before I head back to Dan, can I just, so I understand it, who are these companies? Because we all have heard of companies like Shell and BP or Chevron, but some of them are state actors or state owned. Is that right? How does that balance split up between companies I might be able to buy a share in and Government owned companies. Well, this is another really worrying part of the industry in the sense that the, state companies, who, as you say, are immune to any kind of influence, and many of them are owned by extremely autocratic regimes, whose sole interest, really, is to maintain their power. Those are the ones who are doing most of the investing. And if we look again at the International Energy Agency's most recent report, World Energy Investment Report 2024, most of the new investment or the increasing investment in fossil fuels is coming from Asian and Middle Eastern state controlled companies. It's really difficult to see, Where the purchase and the leverage is on those companies to stop them doing what they're doing They're investing practically nothing in renewables and the companies we've all heard of the western oil majors as they're called they're still investing a very small proportion of their total investments in renewables, but it's more like 10 to 20 percent rather than rather than four you can see that is almost entirely the result of pressure from publics and therefore on governments to encourage these companies to move in that direction. Dan let me pass to you because I mean I live in the climate change world and I've spoken with Paul before but what do you think of what you've heard so far and what Thoughts does it provoke? Well, for me, it just sounds kind of bonkers what's going on. And it almost seems like there's nothing we can do, or how do these companies get leveraged into doing the right thing? Or are there other companies that should come along and replace them? What are the incentives for the companies to move more renewable? How do we, Go down that path. Is that part even possible? Yeah, I was going to suggest to Paul, I mean, I think from what you're saying it seems to me there might be three ways number one Because we've got to think about us as individuals. Otherwise, we're all gonna sit here feeling very disempowered So I guess the first thought is how we bank our money how we invest our money if we have shares or we have a pension fund. The second is how we might Encourage governments to I guess put tax On carbon and carbon pricing. And you might want to tell us a bit about whether you think that works. And I suppose the third is about what we buy, because of course, if we choose not to buy from companies or countries that do this, that has a little bit of purchasing power, how does that work? Can we start with me? Right. I actually don't have a pension. I have an NHS pension, which isn't invested in anything. And I have a bank account, current account, but let's imagine I had some stocks and shares available. And I've got a bank account. What can I do? What should I do tomorrow? Well, there are now lots of avenues for making sure that whatever investments you have, we'll come back to institutional pensions in a minute, to make sure that you're not supporting the fossil fuel industry. So I have a small private pension. I have a financial advisor called Ethical Investors. They are experts in how to invest your money so that it supports your values. One of my values is to move away from fossil fuels as fast as I possibly can. And I tell them that. And they construct a pension portfolio for me with, one of the mainstream, pension companies. So it's not a risky endeavor. I'm not investing in some two bit, outfit down in the back of beyond, but I know that the companies in those portfolios, are all companies that don't invest in fossil fuels. And your point's well made. I mean, it is easy. I sit on five charity boards, all of those charities, not just because of my interest, um, have all moved. All divested from fossil fuels, and you say they're getting good returns on investment, the money just isn't going into the usual things like gums and tobacco, but also not into fossil fuels, and they're making a good return. Absolutely, and it is really interesting. There's been lots and lots of academic work, as you'd expect, on whether ethical funds, as they're called, provide the same or better or worse financial returns than non screened funds that just invest where the market looks like being interesting, and It's inconclusive. In other words, what we can say definitely is that you, No clear harm. There's, there's no clear harm to, to your pension results. It goes up and down like all financial returns. Sometimes when we have very high oil and gas prices, obviously fossil fuel companies do well. And therefore they make a lot of money. Sometimes when they all prices are lower, then, you're definitely quits in going into renewables, but the ethical. Imperative and for me it is an imperative. Means that you take the rough with the smooth good So, okay, we can all do that everyone at home if you have got investments We can move them out of the fossil fuels and move it into things that are perhaps better You've done that and many of the charities I work for done it and others Similarly, what about our personal bank? Who do you bank with, Paul, do you mind if I ask you the question? I bank with Co op Bank. Ah, so do I. And I put my savings mainly into Triodos. Right. Which is a regular winner of the most ethical bank kind of competition. And you've chosen those two because? Co op don't invest in fossil fuels. Yeah. And, Triodos are much more positively inclined in the sense they're not just a negatively screened bank, they actually try to put your money where it's going to do good. So they'll positively try to invest in renewables and other things. And like you, I mean, I'm with Co operative, Monzo don't invest, Nationwide Building Society doesn't invest in fossil fuels, Triodos, as you say. So there are choices that we can all make. And the changing, uh, for anyone who's interested, of course, is dead easy. The open banking platform, they say it takes 10 minutes. In honesty, it takes about half an hour, but you can do it. It moves all your direct debits over. It's dead easy. So anyone listening to this. Today, presumably you, like I, would say just move your bank account across, it's really easy, then you're not investing in the bad stuff. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so that's two things we can do. We can change our pension funds or investments, we can move our bank accounts., what do we do about taxation on carbon? Because there is this thing called carbon pricing isn't there? And there's been some papers recently suggesting that it does seem to work. How does it work and how would we make that a global phenomenon that would be effective? Well, the first thing to say is that it's becoming a global phenomenon. So the World Bank publishes every year, the state and trends of carbon pricing report. And it's fascinating if you look at the way that's developed over the last 10 or 15 years, and they've got a lovely interactive map on their website, which shows you, you go back to, 2005. And you see there's practically no carbon pricing, few Scandinavian countries, a few European countries. Then, as the years go on, it fills up. And we now have carbon pricing, either carbon taxes or emission trading systems, both of which put a price on carbon. Explain this to me then, so how do I as a, let's say, British government or Is it European? I don't really know. How do I, how would, how do I tax carbon or trade carbon? Uh, well, it's not European because, it's still very much a national competence. So it might be the British government, it might be the French government or the German government, all of which do have carbon taxes of one kind or another. They simply, levy a tax on the use of fossil fuels. Uh, upstream, which means on the fossil fuel companies that bring them into the country. They levy it According to the carbon content of the fossil fuels the three main fossil fuels have different carbon contents So you pay more in carbon tax on coal than you do on methane gas The carbon prices around the world vary enormously so explain this to me because again i'm getting confused here Paul. You've told us that we've got a Failure of speed of transition, we're not going fast enough, and yet I read in the newspapers all the time how massive the profits are every day for these fossil fuel companies. Surely we just increase the tax on them and say you're making bazillions of pounds out of something that's killing us. So we're going to take some of that money and make you put it into renewables or we'll finance them to tilt the balance. Surely that would be an easy and obvious thing to do. Why isn't it happening? Well, the first reason is that the fossil fuel companies don't like it. And they have enormous political power and they lobby against it. And as we've seen, the UK government has just had a manifesto commitment to impose an extra windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas. And the fossil fuel industry is kicking up like crazy, saying you're going to make the entire industry unprofitable. It means that we won't invest anything in renewables. We won't have any money to invest in renewables. I saw that letter. And yet you say 96 percent of it is still going to fossil fuels. Absolutely. They are an enormous break on the transition. So our job, again, because we're trying in this podcast to help people know what it is they can do as opposed to feeling disempowered. I guess our job, no matter which colour of government it is, is to support any government that is trying to do those sorts of things, right? We need to say this is a vote winner for us. Well, absolutely. When you ally that to the positive economics of investing in renewables, Which several, both economists and politicians whom I respect have said is the growth opportunity of the 21st century. So what you're doing two things. You're cutting down the carbon emissions because you're making fossil fuels more expensive. And insofar as there are any laws in economics, the one that says if you make things more expensive, people will consume less of it. Right. Is, that one seems to be the most solidly based. So that's the positive for the climate. The positive for the economy is that you're investing in other stuff because we need energy. And that other stuff is the source of Huge new industries, huge quantities of jobs, and ultimately cheaper energy. And what we know is that if we could only get a reform of our electricity market in this country, we would find that electricity prices fell dramatically, because renewables are the cheapest form of electricity in the UK. Dan, I mean, I don't know, you, you're an expert on this because one of the things everyone talks about, of course, is this baseload thing. So, you know, when the wind's blowing, the sun's shining, it's great. When the wind isn't blowing, the sun isn't shining. Whoops. Is that something you followed yourself, you must have done? Yeah. And I think that, you know, you talk to a lot of people and, the solar power, they go well, it's raining half the year. You know, I was in Ireland over the weekend and it rains every day over there, so I don't know if solar panels are going to do their job. The wind. It's sometimes there, sometimes not. So people look at renewable and they, they think it might be a bit inefficient. And I think that there's sometimes a bit of a, disconnect, because I don't think people realize that the power of renewable energy, is actually as impressive as it potentially is. How do we cope with that intermittency though? I mean, because that is a problem, right? On a day when it's not blowing and it's not sunny. At the moment, we spark up a gas fired power station. So, what do we do? Do we go nuclear, or are we going to be able to store the energy in some way? Hydrogen, or batteries, or What's the answer to this? Because if we're going to do it quickly, we've got to get on with it, haven't we? We do have to get on with it. We don't have to do it immediately, which is just as well, because we're not ready to do it immediately. In the sense that, we are making good progress in decarbonizing the grid in the UK. I remember not so long ago, back in the early 2000s, people were saying you'll never get more than 20 percent renewables on the system because they're intermittent and they don't do much. Last year we had over 50 percent renewables on the system and it's still climbing. You're quite right to say that storage is a huge challenge as indeed is getting the grid, updated so that we can get the renewables from where they are because the wind is where it is. to where people want to use it. Right, now here's a problem then, okay, because we're, everyone, probably me included in some way, is a nimby. We don't want the thing we don't like in our backyard. Not in my backyard. We can't put all of the electricity transmission underground, because that means digging up lots of ground, but it also means when you've got a fault in a line, you've got to dig it all up again. It becomes very expensive. So I guess we're going to have to be looking at, transmission cables, you know, pylons. But people don't like pylons. They don't want a pylon near them. They don't want to cross their farmland or whatever else. How do we balance that? Do we use economics to say, Well, if there's a pylon near your house, we give you a subsidy on your power, or we give you a cash return, or How do we manage that? Because I can see there will be backlash, won't there? There will be people saying, I don't want this here. There will, of course, of course, that will happen. At the macro level, the politics is relatively straightforward in that renewables are really popular and a government that goes for them will find that there's local resistance, but overall, the politics is going to work. Having said that, local resistance is really important, and it's important that people's voices are heard, and that stakeholders are taken into account. Part of it might be, giving them cheaper power, or other kinds of incentives. We've been here before, when we built the nuclear power stations, they were all right on the coast. Producing very large quantities of electricity that had to be shipped into the demand centres. We built, if you go out into Suffolk today and you have a look at the Sizewell B power station, which is the largest in the UK at the moment, there's a whole army of pylons marching across Suffolk, bringing that electricity. to where it's needed. We're going to have to, do something like that with all the offshore wind, which is going to be the mainstay of the British electricity system. And, yeah, it's something that, no one is particularly pleased about, but we, with climate change, we can be sure that those landscapes are going to be destroyed anyway. Well, that's, that's the thing, isn't it? And we die, so. Absolutely. No choices. One other question then, Paul, and I'm going to go back to Dan. I'm exercised by what you said earlier on. Six years of carbon, at best, before we bust our way through one and a half degrees, and it's probably less than that, as we both know. And it's all very well what we're doing in Britain and we're really going for it. But a lot of people listening to this in the UK will say, well, so what? I mean, you've just told us we've only got six years left. Britain is a small fraction of the global emissions. And you've also said that around in Southeast Asia and abroad, people are just chucking up coal fired power stations left, right and centre because they can't get the capital at the right price that allows them to make the right investment. How do we change that? Because that's, that's a thorny problem. People listening to this podcast, or me, actually, I, what do I do to help change that? Can I? Is there anything we can do to, to divert this supertanker globally? Well, I think, firstly, it is a real issue. Clearly it is a real issue. I think there are two things. The first thing is, as individuals, We need to consume as little fossil fuel as we possibly can. Right. Because, that's what the industry always says. Says, oh guys, you know, we're only doing what consumers want. We, you know, we don't particularly want to produce this stuff. It's just that are you consumers - you're just demanding it the whole time. So we need to consume as little as possible. That's number one. And number two, I mean, the example that I have in my mind is the Marshall Plan. And the Marshall Plan, of course, was, uh Yes, explain that to them, because some of these people listening won't be as old as I am. Well, and even, it certainly won't be as old as I am, and even I was only a small boy when the Marshall Plan was rolling out in the 1950s. This was after the Second World War. Uh, Europe was on its knees. Most of its infrastructure had been destroyed during the course of the Second World War. And the United States felt, that in order to get the free world back on its feet, we've defeated Nazism, thank heaven. But in order to get the free world back on its feet, there would need to be huge investment in Europe. And clearly, The European countries were not in any position to make that investment unaided. They were on their knees. So there were enormous financial transfers from the United States, which of course even then was the global economic superpower, to various European countries, particularly Germany, which of course was the defeated country. That enabled the European renaissance within 10 years. And suddenly, from being absolutely on its knees, European countries developed market economies. Also, the European Economic Community was founded, which enabled European countries to cooperate much more together. And of course, that was always intended to be a great peace project as well, to stop European countries fighting each other. And, over 15 or 20 years, Europe, rose from the ashes. Quite literally rose from the ashes. And what we need now is for the relatively rich world, and I mean the United States, I mean Europe, I mean the Middle East, I mean China, which is now a relatively rich country, actually to recognize that we need a global Marshall Plan. To get rid of fossil fuels, especially from those developing countries who their main, their main priority in life is development. And we can understand that. And if we don't help them develop with renewables, they will develop with fossil fuels without any doubt at all. So that kind of climate Marshall Plan is the sort of thing we ought to be discussing at the annual COP meetings where people talk about climate policy globally. unfortunately, we haven't got as far as that yet, but that's what's got to happen. Dan, what do you think of what you've heard then? Thoughts and reflections are along the lines of It just seems incredibly complicated and based on an infrastructure that's been put in place over the last few decades where we're well down a path which seems to be quite difficult to reverse around. It's good to know that there are things that you can do as a consumer, which can actually start to move the dial a little bit. But ultimately, it seems that we also need to be working with politicians and moving policy forward I'm not so concerned that we move the dial a little bit as they go because each what each one of us does You know, I'm not rich move a little bit of money in a bank account from there She stopped it doesn't make much difference But the leverage of what the that bank would lend against what I've got in the bank and the signal to market I think these things do matter and we talked I podcast about You If we can each get seven people to do the same thing. So maybe what I'm guessing is where we talked in the first podcast, I think about getting a dinner party, getting seven or eight people around and moving your, power supplier online before we have a glass of wine. And we're now saying we move our bank accounts There's quite a lot of leverage going on. And that would be noticed, I'm imagining, Paul, if a few tens of thousands, I mean, we've got what, 1. 4 million people working in the NHS in Great Britain alone, let alone other people in the healthcare sector working in drug companies and so forth. If those millions of people all moved their bank accounts, would the markets notice? Oh, they'd notice more than, I mean, if it was millions, they, they would jump. I mean, the markets are really attuned to this stuff now. So, I mean, you know, it's called ESG, Environmental Social Governance Investing. It's quite controversial and there's considerable pushback against it, as I've already said, in the United States. But It doesn't matter whether you're BlackRock, whether you're one of the big insurance companies, they're all looking at this stuff, and they are all wanting to capture part of what they perceive to be a very much a growing market. More and more people, as more and more people Get concerned about climate change and start looking at these kinds of moves There are very highly paid executives in these companies who are looking at that the whole time I mean, I know because I work a certain amount with them as indeed do you Hugh. So we know that these guys are sitting there in their offices managing very large sums of Assets under management Wondering where to put them and seeing where the trends are going and they are sensitive to a few percent Well, this is really exciting Dan because I don't know if you noticed how Paul jumped when I said millions Well, you know we can move millions right because there are tens of millions living in Britain There's one and a half million. This is roughly in the health sector. There's loads of people who work in social care There's loads more people who work for drug companies There's loads of well meaning people outside the whole sector who just saying, I want to do the right thing here in a way that's painless. And yet again, we've come up with another answer. You move your bank out, takes half an hour. It does move all your direct debits. Everything moves across. It is pretty painless process for nearly everybody. And we could all do that tonight and give Paul his wish there. I mean, a couple of million people and watch the markets jump. No, indeed. And, that's one of the great strengths of markets. I mean, like Dan, I'm also very much in favour of us being responsible citizens, and it's enormously important that we elect governments that are prepared to do their bit. We talked a bit about carbon pricing, carbon taxes, carbon emission trading systems. You can't do that as an individual. That requires governments, and it's really important that governments do it. The licensing of North Sea fossil fuels. Which, the past government in the UK was very keen to do. The current government, which was recently elected, is not keen to do that. And that is a very good thing. And voters have brought that about because we were quite clear from the manifestos what the various offers were. And the offer to go away from fossil fuels won hands down. I don't think we'll see another election where any major party is actually anti-climate because it, loses votes. So what we need to be doing though, on that sort of other action is to be vociferous. in saying whatever colour of party we want to support, we're going to support a party that is the most ambitious and aggressive in this, whether it's any, name a party, and we let them know. You can do this, of course, by sending an email or sending a letter to an MP. My understanding is that if MPs get lots of letters, it gets reported up to the whips. So they're saying, look, this is the sentiment of the public. So we can exert our political. influence, not just on the day of an election by putting an X in the box. Absolutely. I mean, the rule of thumb I've heard from politicians, obviously I have no evidence behind this, is that every letter they get, they multiply by 600. in their minds. They say that the chances that any individual writes them about anything is relatively small, but when they get one, they reckon that out there, the other 599 who think the same, but just haven't got down to putting pen to paper. So you can see that's, uh, that's a considerable multiplier. Dan, are you encouraged now? Because you know, we start off by going, well, six years left before we bust the carbon budget. Do you feel empowered by that? I do feel empowered. Who do you bank with, Dan? I'm going to put you on the spot. I bank with TSB. Okay, are you going to move? I think I should move, yes. Well, that's a different answer to whether you will move. Yes, I will be moving. Thank you. And I'll get seven friends around. Good man. And I'll have a party for it as well. Okay. But I just want, also, we just want to pick up on the six years because, everyone's very hooked up on this 1.5 degrees, which is fine. It's always interesting to have a target. Politicians love targets and undoubtedly it's immobilized people who might not have been mobilized at the political level. But a much better slogan is every fraction of a degree counts. 1.6 is worse than 1.5. But it's a jolly sight better than two, and every fraction of a degree counts. We're currently heading for three. Yeah. And three is utterly catastrophic. There will be no human civilization if we get to three. we can do lots. And although 1.5, with its six years, at current levels of emissions seems a bit of a stretch. Two is still absolutely within our power. So we mustn't, I think, Imagine that because 1.5 is six years and we're never going to get there, well therefore we can't do anything. Because everything we do, every ton of fossil fuel that stays in the ground is not in the atmosphere. And that's reducing the climate warming. Very good. Well, Paul, thank you so much for coming in today and talking to us all about this. I'm really interested. I'm going to be changing my bank account within the next week. Wonderful. Um, and, uh, yeah, it's been fantastic. Hugh. Thank you so much, Dan. I've really enjoyed it. It's, um, and thank you again, Paul. I've really enjoyed the conversation as well. I always learn something when I talk to you. Thank you, my pleasure. Thanks, Paul. And, once again, Hugh, which website do we go to to learn more about this kind of thing? So, realzero.earth. You'll find the seven acts on there, and it'll be ramping up, giving you, for instance, the links, the bank accounts that you can move to and so forth as well to make it easy for you. Great. Well, realzero.earth. Guys, thank you so much for coming in, and we'll talk next time on the next podcast. Look forward to it. Thanks for having us. Take care. Bye bye. Cheers.