The most important question these days is how can we speed up
the solutions to the climate crisis? I'm convinced we are going
to solve the climate crisis. We've got this. But the question remains,
will we solve it in time? Others have said we're kind of in a race. I'll give you the the shortest
definition of the problem. If I was going to give a one-slide
slide show, it would be this slide. That's the troposphere,
the lowest part of the atmosphere. And you already know why it's blue. That's the oxygen
that refracts the blue light. And if you could drive a car at highway
speed straight up in the air, you'd get to the top of that blue
line in about five to seven minutes. You could walk it in an hour. And all of the greenhouse gas
pollution is below you. That's what we're using as an open sewer. That's the problem. And it's causing a lot of second
and third order consequences. And we saw some of them
in the northern-tier cities, including Detroit. This one's from New York City,
all the fires in Canada. And we have gotten used to the fact
that the world suffers deep droughts and huge rain bombs and downpours
and floods simultaneously. The really ingenious new
gravity-measuring satellite has given us, for the first time, the opportunity to see
how this plays out worldwide. We get these huge surpluses of water, the rain bombs and the drought
simultaneously. And as you can see,
the amplitude is increasing. And at both ends of our planet right now,
we're seeing signs of distress. Of course, you know, I've often said, every night on the TV news
is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. And just today, big flooding in Montpelier, Vermont, in southern Japan, in India. And I haven't done a complete scan, but every single day, it's like that. But in Antarctica, some scientists who are normally
pretty levelheaded are getting a little bit freaked out,
I would say, is a fair definition, about the lowest level ever,
at this point in the year, of sea ice. And at the other pole,
in the North Atlantic, we're seeing literally
off-the-charts temperatures. So obviously, the crisis
has to be addressed. And the good news is,
as others have often said, we are seeing tremendous progress. And it starts with the Inflation Reduction
Act here in the United States. President Biden, the Congress,
they have passed the best, biggest climate legislation
in all of history, and it's said to be 369 billion. But the heavy lifting
is done by tax credits, and most of them are open-ended. And the early applications already show it's going to be well over
a trillion dollars, maybe 1.2 trillion. So this is really good news. And one month after that passed, Australia changed its government
and started changing its laws. And it's now a pro-climate nation. A month after that,
Brazil did the same thing, new president, new policies
protecting the Amazon. And throughout, the European Union
has resisted the efforts of Russia to blackmail it into supporting its sadistic and cruel
invasion of Ukraine. And there are other signs
of success as well. China's reached its renewables target
five years ahead of time. It's still building a lot of coal,
but only 50 percent capacity utilization. So there is lots of good news. But still, in spite of this progress, the emissions are still going up. And the crisis is still getting worse faster than we are deploying
the solutions. So maybe it's time to look
at the obstacles that are standing in our way. I'm going to focus on two
of them this afternoon. First of all, the unrelenting opposition
from the fossil fuel industry. A lot of people think
they're on side and trying to help. But let me tell you, and the activists will all tell you this, every piece of legislation,
whether it's at the municipal level, the regional or provincial level, the national level
or the international level, they're in there with their lobbyists
and with their fixers and with their revolving-door colleagues doing everything they can
to slow down progress. So speeding up progress means
doing something about this. They have used fraud on a massive scale. They’ve used falsehoods
on an industrial scale. And they’ve used their legacy political
and economic networks, lavishly funded, to capture the policy-making process
in too many countries around the world. And the [UN] Secretary General said the fossil fuel industry is the polluted
heart of the climate crisis. Now, that's not to say that the men
and women who've worked in fossil fuel for the last century and a half
are not due our gratitude. They are, and they didn't cause this. But for decades now, the companies
have had the evidence. They know the truth, and they consciously
decided to lie to publics all around the world in order to calm down
the political momentum for doing something about it
so they can make more money. It's simple as that. (Applause) And now they have brazenly seized
control of the COP process, especially this year's COP in Dubai
in the United Arab Emirates. And concern has been building
about this for quite some time. I remember when there were so many
fossil fuel delegates in Madrid, but by the time we got to Glasgow
a year and a half ago, the delegates from
the fossil fuel companies made up a larger group
than the largest national delegation. And why? Why? Because they're helping? They're not helping,
they're trying to stop progress. And last year in Egypt, they had more delegates
than the combined delegations of the ten most affected
countries by climate. And now this year's host,
which is a petro state, has appointed the president of COP28, in spite of the fact that he has
a blatant conflict of interest, he's the CEO of the Abu Dhabi
National Oil Company owned by Abu Dhabi. Their emissions are larger
than those of ExxonMobil, and they have no credible plan
whatsoever to reduce them. So this is the person
in charge of the COP. He's a nice guy. He's a smart guy. But a conflict of interest
is a conflict of interest. And a matter of fact, they have a plan now to have
a new increase in their emissions. Their plan is to increase
the production of both oil and gas by as much as 50 percent by 2030. Which is the same time frame when the world is trying
to reduce emissions, by 50 percent by 2030. And the same person has been put in charge
of both of those efforts. Direct conflict of interest. I think it's time to say, wait a minute, do you take us for fools? Do you think you can just completely
remove the disguise and we won't notice? The fossil fuel industry has captured
this process and is slowing it down. And we need to do something about it. Now, they plan to increase
their emissions -- (Applause) Getting all hot and bothered here. (Laughter) The head of the International
Energy Agency was talking about several oil companies who have publicly pledged
to increase their oil and gas and simultaneously pledged
to comply with the Paris Agreement. Do you take us for fools? You cannot do both
of those things simultaneously. And if you think we believe you
when you say that, we beg to differ. Last year at the COP, the fossil fuel petro states vetoed any mention of phasing down fossil fuels. They say, oh, that's not the problem. One of the secretary of state
equivalent in Saudi Arabia said, we don't see this
as a discussion about fossil fuels. Let me tell you, the climate crisis
is a fossil fuel crisis. The solutions are going
to come from a discussion and collaboration
about phasing out fossil fuels. And there's only so much longer
they can hold this up and tie us down and keep us
from doing the right thing. Now the director general
of this year's COP, working under Sultan Al Jaber,
he worked for ADNOC also, he was seconded for several
years to ExxonMobil. He said, no, that’s all changed.
This year, they’ve changed. The fossil fuel companies
are really engaging us. They have changed. Yes, they have changed. They've changed for the worse this year. You don't believe me? Look at this, BP. They said, "We're going to net zero,
there's no turning back." A few months ago this year,
they turned back and they decided to roll back
their investments. ExxonMobil. Oh, my God. This is minor compared to their
industrial-scale lying, you know. But they've had all the TV ads on,
particularly in the US, about revolutionizing biofuels. "You wouldn't believe what algae can do." Well, for 14 years they ran this program. And they spent 50 percent
as much on the ads about the program as they did on actually trying
to come up with new biofuels. And then a couple of months ago,
they said, "Oh, we've changed our mind. We're just going to cancel that program." The industry as a whole has not been acting in good faith. Shell reversed its commitment to increase
their investments in fossil fuels. They announced just a couple of months ago
they're going to plow that money into expanding oil and gas
production instead. So did they miss the memo? Well, no, they say
they've discovered a way out. They're telling us now
that the problem is not fossil fuels. It's the emissions from fossil fuels. And so all we have to do is to capture
the emissions from the fossil fuels. Now, I'm all for research and development into trying to capture emissions or sucking it out of the air
if they want to do that. But let's don't pretend it's for real. Maybe someday it will be. Maybe someday it will be. (Applause) This is the head of ExxonMobil
saying, "Not oil and gas, it's the emissions." And Abu Dhabi, they have said they've already
decreased their emissions from producing oil and gas, 99.2 percent. The point two makes it sound
even more authoritative. (Laughter) Is that feasible? Have they really done that? Is their carbon capture technology
that’s that good? Well, Climate TRACE can measure. Now, let's just look. There's their CCS capability. Oh, but they've got a great
improvement in the work. Seven years from now, they're going to have a 500 percent
increase in their capacity. But here are the emissions
from oil and gas production alone. And here are the emissions
of greenhouse gases from Abu Dhabi, from the UAE. Now, the pathetic little sliver there compared to the reality, again, do they think we don't see
what they're doing, don't understand what they're doing? A lot of people maybe just want
to look away from it. Pretty ironic here in this country. You know, the coal-burning utilities have been given a new mandate
this year by the EPA. You've got to clean up your act. Now, you can keep on burning coal and you can keep on
producing electricity with it if you use carbon capture
and sequestration. Well, they scream bloody murder. Another story about it this morning, but they say, that technology? That's not feasible. It's not technically feasible,
not economically feasible. So they need to get
their story straight, in my opinion. So the technology of CCS has been around for a long time, 50 years, and we get used to technologies
automatically getting cheaper and better, you know, with the computer chips
and the cell phones and all that. Well, University of Oxford
did a whole study, and some come down
in cost fast, some slow. A few are in a category called
non-improving technologies. And that’s where carbon
capture and storage is. 50 years, not any price decline. Well, could we get
a breakthrough in spite of that? Maybe. We're throwing a lot of money at it. We had to do that to get the compromise
that passed the IRA, and we ought to continue the research. But again, let's don't pretend
that it's here. It's not here now. And to use it as an excuse,
and now they've got another one. Now it's called direct air capture. These are giant vacuum cleaners
that use an awful lot of energy. It's technically feasible,
but it's extremely expensive. And it also uses so much energy. But it is tremendously useful. You know what it's used for? The CEO of one of the largest
oil companies in the US had told us what it's useful for. It's useful to give them an excuse
for not ever stopping oil. A few months later, she said, "This gives us, this new technology,
a license to continue operating." Some people call that a moral hazard. For them, the moral hazard is not a bug, it's a feature, as the old saying goes. And so let's just look,
this is state-of-the-art. It looks pretty impressive, doesn't it? This is the backside
of one of these machines. (Laughter) I had the same thought. (Laughter) Now this, they're improving this. (Applause) They're improving this. And the new model, seven years from now, each of these machines
is going to be able to capture 27 seconds' worth
of annual emissions. Woohoo. That gives them a license
to continue producing more and more oil and gas. Or so they claim. Well, they also say, the experts, that in order to be economically feasible, it has to come in
at 100 dollars a ton or less. The leading company says
that 27 years from now, it may come down below
three times that amount. So again, if this sounds
kind of incredible, it is not credible. But they're using it
in order to gaslight us, literally. But I didn't mean it as a pun,
but that's what they're using it to do. And we can't fall for it. The biggest obstacle to direct
air capture is probably physics. And what I mean by that,
they've explained this to me. CO2 makes up 0.035 percent of the air so we're going to vacuum
the other 99.96 percent to get that little bit out. Come on, really? Come on. And it doesn't even pretend
to catch the methane or the soot or the mercury
or the particulate pollution that kills 9 million people a year
around the world. And that's why the climate
justice advocates are so down on this kind of nonsense. They say, here's one of them says,
look, we need to fight climate change, but don't do it by pretending to do it
and continue dumping all this pollution on the front line communities
that are downwind from the smokestacks. And that's why they have not ever
really liked the carbon capture. And what about all
the energy that's needed? Is it going to come
from more fossil fuels? Well, in case of Occidental, yes. But could it come
from more solar and wind? Well, if so, why not use
the solar and wind to replace the fossil fuel-burning plants that are putting all that stuff
up there in the first place? Doesn't that make sense? Am I missing something? (Applause) Anyway, this is the environmental
justice advocate who is making the point that you can't do it without protecting
those who are victimized downwind from the smokestacks,
downstream from the pollution. Now, some of the companies, of course, you say we're going
to offset our emissions. And again, offsets can play
a role, a small role, five to 10 percent according
to the Science Based Targets initiative, the most authoritative source
on all of this. But, you know, Chevron
just had its offsets analyzed. It turned out 93 percent of them
were worthless and junk. And that's too often the case. It's not a get-out-of-jail-free card. And their offsets were only aimed
at 10 percent of their emissions in the first place. Eighty percent
of the fossil fuel companies just completely ignore
the Scope Three emissions, which is the main part
of their pollution problem. So they say that they
have increased by 400 percent the share of their spending on energy that goes to green technologies
and carbon capture. And yes, they have, they've increased
it all the way up to four percent. And it's not even as good as that, because if you look at the windfall
profits they've been getting, what have they done with that? Well, they gave it back
to the shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks. So the amount of money the fossil fuel industry
is investing in renewables and carbon capture is one percent. Does that mean they are sincere actors,
working in good faith? I don't think so. A lot of people still think so. They think they're on our side. I don't think it's in their nature
to be on our side. I think they're driven by incentives
that push them in the opposite direction. But in any case, they produce no solutions
whatsoever that are scalable or remotely feasible. And again, they have actively fought against the solutions that others
have been trying to bring. I've seen it personally. Many of you have seen it personally. And it's happening all over the world. No progress. They've even gone backwards. Now, if a company says, look, we shouldn't be excluded
from the COP process, we know a lot about energy. Here's a simple test. Do they actually have, does the company have
real net-zero commitments, a genuine phase-down plan, yes or no? Are they committed to full disclosure? Yes or no? Are they going to spend
windfall profits on the transition? Yes or no? Are they committed to transparency? Will they end their anti-climate lobbying? Will they end their greenwashing? Will they be in favor
of reforming the COP process so that the petro states
don't have an absolute veto on anything the world wants
to discuss or act on? We've got to change that. In order to move faster, we have got to empower
the global community in a way that frees them
from the hammerlock that the fossil fuel companies
have on them today. And any company
that doesn't pass this test, I'm telling you, ought to be prohibited from taking
part in the COP process. (Cheers and applause) What about the company that's led
by the president of this year's COP, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company? Well, it's rated one
of the least responsible of all the oil and gas companies. It no longer even releases information on any of its emissions,
has no transition plan, no short or mid-term target scores, a pathetic three on 100-scale
on their transition plans. And the nation's plan
is rated highly insufficient. They just put out a new one,
it's still insufficient. So that's the first obstacle. Second one's a lot clearer. This one has to be removed
in order to get to the faster solutions. But in order to remove it, we've got to do something
about the second obstacle, and that is the financial system, the global allocation of capital
and the subsidies for fossil fuels. Governments last year around the world
subsidized with taxpayer money more than a trillion dollars,
subsidizing fossil fuels. That's five times larger
than the amount in 2020. Are we going in the right direction
or the wrong direction? Well, there are a lot
of good things I'll show you, but this has to stop. And the 60 largest global banks have put 5.5 trillion extra dollars into the fossil fuel companies
since the Paris agreement. And preposterously, 49 of them
have also signed net-zero pledges. So we ... Global allocation of capital. The borrowing of private
capital is ruled out for many developing countries. Nigeria has to pay an interest rate
seven times higher than Europe or the US. Political risk, corruption risk,
currency risk, off-take risk, it's rule of law risk. That's why the World Bank and the other
multilateral development banks are supposed to take
those top layers of risk off. And that's why we need
reform in the World Bank. Thank goodness so many fought
to get a new head of the World Bank, and I'm very excited about his progress. Now, when these obstacles are removed,
we can really accelerate progress. They'll still be problems, of course, but we have everything we need and proven deployment models
to reduce emissions 50 percent in the next seven years. But we will still need better grids, more resilient grids, more solar and wind, much more regenerative agriculture. That's a way to really pull
carbon out of the air. More electric vehicles
and charging stations and more energy storage. I'll show you that just
before we quit here. And more green hydrogen,
so more electrolyzers to produce it. And these are all surmountable obstacles. Already, renewables account for 90 percent of all the new electricity generation
being installed each year worldwide. Ninety-three percent solar
and wind in India last year. And of course, the solar's
taking off and so is wind and so are the electric vehicles
and battery storage. It has grown so dramatically. You’ve got to rescale the graph to look
at the trillion-dollar industry emerging. Now, just seven years ago,
there was one gigafactory. I learned from one of you
at a session a couple of hours ago and had my staff research it, there are now 195 gigafactories
and another 300 in the pipeline. So will we succeed? Some people fight
with a vulnerability to despair. You know, the old cliche, “denial
ain’t just a river in Egypt.” Despair ain’t just a tire in the trunk. There are people that are vulnerable. But let me close with what I regard
as amazingly good news. What if we could stop
the increase in temperatures? Well, if you look
at the temperature increases, if we get to true net-zero, astonishingly, global temperatures
will stop going up with a lag time of as little
as three to five years. They used to think that positive feedback
loops would keep that process going. No, it will not. The temperatures will stop going up. The ice will continue melting
and some other things will continue, but we can stop
the increase of temperatures. Even better, if we stay at true net zero,
in as little as 30 years, half of all the human-caused CO2
will come out of the atmosphere into the upper ocean
and the trees and vegetation. So young people are demanding
that we do the right thing. Do not be vulnerable to despair. We are going to do this. And if you doubt that we,
as human beings have the will to act, please always remember that the will to act
is itself a renewable resource. Thank you very much. (Cheers and applause) Thank you.
