September 4, 2025 • 32 mins
This week, we hear from you. Bloomberg Green’s Akshat Rathi answers questions from Zero listeners: Can a decline in trade help fight climate change? How do we tell if corporations are greenwashing or not? And are we about to enter a new era of global collaboration when it comes to green tech? If you have a question for the show, send us a voice note or message to zeropod@bloomberg.net.
Explore further:
- Brazil's Amazonian Leaders Deliver Dark Message on Gold Mining to London
- Nigeria's Solar Gamble Forces Millions in Lagos to Unplug From Dirty Generators
- Green Growth Is Expensive. The Global Economy Can Afford It
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Eleanor Harrison Dengate, Siobhan Wagner, Sommer Saadi and Mohsis Andam. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshatarati. This week we hear from you.
A few weeks ago we put out a call to
our listeners for questions. Thank you to everyone who'll sent
(00:22):
them in. We've got a great response, and in this
episode we will try to answer as many of them
as we can. To help me do that, we've got
Bloomberg Senior Africa reporter Yinka Ibukun and Zero's producer Oscar Boyd.
Welcome back to Zero, Yinka and Oscar.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
So.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Our first question comes from beat Koch from Switzerland, and
he asks, I.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Was wondering if in the end the tariff politics of
Donald Trump might help the environment and reduce CO two emissions.
If international trade falls significantly, CO two emissions will go down,
which is what we want and need most at the moment.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
So akshat Donald Trump has started at tariff, is he
also a climate warrior in disguise?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Well, wouldn't that be nice? I mean the implication here
is that less trade will mean less goods are shipped
around the world, and thus there will be fewer CO
two emissions because a lot of shipping fuel is really
bad bunker fuel it's very carbon intensive. But that I
think is a very short term way of thinking about it,
(01:31):
because lower trade could also mean lower economic growth, and
that could also mean lower emissions. So the perhaps reduction
in CO two could be even greater, not just from
a reduction in the volume of trade, but just reduction
in economic activity. Now, be careful, this is not the
(01:51):
kind of climate action we want. We want economies to
grow and reduce their emissions because that's what people want.
And so if you want political action for climate, you
want people to be happy that their economies are growing
and their emissions are reducing.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Basically, because you're saying that if the trade war is
as bad as we feel or think it might be,
then people who rely on those jobs are going to
lose their jobs. And that means yes, maybe similar carbon emissions,
but it also means people who are out of work.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
That's right, And then there are secondary implications too. So
say you're trading less, it doesn't mean that the countries
demand for those products is gotten down. So you're going
to try and manufacture it at home, and if you
do that, you're going to have to build a new factory.
You'll have to come up with new processes, think of
a new supply chain and all that will also have
a carbon impact that we are not counting right now.
(02:45):
But there is a way in which you can use
trade for climate and that's what the European Union is
doing with its carbon border adjustment mechanism. And here's a
concrete example on how that can have a carbon impact.
So say you're steelmaker in European Union. You make your steel,
you produce about one point eight tons of carbon dioxide
(03:06):
emissions for every ton of steel. You're a Chinese maker,
and on average a Chinese maker is putting out two
point two tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of
CO two. But China makes it cheap, and the European
car maker wants to get cheap steel, and so they
just buy the Chinese steel, don't really think about carbon,
(03:26):
and the European Union like, stop, we don't want that.
We want you to reduce their emissions. And so if
China wants to send their steel to us, if their
emissions are more than European Union, they have to pay
a price on top. And so for the point four
tons of emissions they're going to have to pay in
current price about thirty dollars per ton of steel that
(03:49):
they export to the European Union, and that's an additional price,
and that will make the Chinese steelmaker want to reduce
their emissions, and we'll see if that works. But if
you really want to use trade to cut emissions, that's
the way to go.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
So our next question comes from Eleanor Harrison Dengate, who's
a producer on Bloomberg's daily podcast, which is called The
Big Take, and her question arose after a trip she
recently took.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
Hi Action and the Zero Team. I just had a
holiday in what you would definitely call oil country, specifically
in Calgary, Canada, where basically the whole city is built
off oil, and I met a lot of people there
who were very pro oil and very anti renewable energy.
And one of the concerns that they would bring up
about renewable energy when I asked them about this, was
(04:37):
that they said that renewable energy will never be dense
enough compared to fossil fuels or nuclear And I was
wondering if there's any truth in what they're saying, and
if that is the case that renewables aren't dense enough, now,
is there a way in the future where we will
see more dense renewable energies. Anyway, thanks very much and love.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
The show, Eleanor nice to hear from you, and I'm
sorry you were caught in propaganda from the fossil fuel
industry and even the nuclear industry. There is some factual
basis to that question, so let me first go through
that and tell you why that is propaganda. The factual
part is energy density is a real metric. If we
(05:20):
take crude oil and say crude oil has one unit
of energy density, then nuclear fission. So the thing that
most nuclear power plants are made of, which is uranium fuel,
has a few hundred thousand times as much energy density
as crude oil, and if you wanted to go one up,
if you went to nuclear fusion fuel. So the thing
(05:41):
that powers the sun that has seven million times the
energy density, and then solar and wind are thousands of
times lower energy density than oil. So factually that makes
for a good argument. The problem is it's not really
about energy density most of the time. Sometimes it is
(06:01):
you want to fly on a trans atlantic flight, you
want an energy dense fuel because you only want to
fuel once and be able to travel thousands of kilometers
and land safely.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
So you're saying we should make nuclear power planes.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Well, the trouble is it's not just the fuel. How
you convert the fuel into usable energy also matters, and
so your jet fuel is very good at not just
being energy dense, but also very good at converting that
energy density into motion. Nuclear terrible. So there are no
(06:34):
plans yet to make nuclear power planes. There might be
nuclear rocket engines at some point that are not going
to take off from the planet but may travel between stars.
But you know we're going down science fiction right now,
let's come back to Earth. The thing that really matters
is cost. At what cost and what availability Do you
(06:55):
get the fuel you want when you want to use it,
and when you use it how efficiently are you able
to use it? So twentieth century was the century of
oil because well, Winston Churchill decided coal powered boats aren't
going to win the war. We need oil powered ships,
and that's what he made a big bet on. That's
(07:17):
probably what helped Britain able to fight in World War Two.
It also helped power all the cars that we developed
in the twentieth century. But we know that an electric
car now can do essentially all the things that a
fossil fuel car can do, and do it cheaply, and
do it in a way that is more efficient, because
your electric car is going four times the distance for
(07:40):
the same amount of energy as your fossil fuel car does.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
This question is from Doug Bamford, who's a lecture based
in Oxfordshire, and he wants to know.
Speaker 6 (07:50):
My question is about the finance industry and the climate change,
because I've seen headlines recently that US financial institutions have
pulled out of the net zero Banking Alliance that now
includes some UK headquartered banks as well, like HSBC and Barclay's,
and I'm wondering if this represents a major change in
(08:12):
the activities of these institutions, and if it is a
change even the mind one, then perhaps should climate conscious
investors and consumers of banking services be looking to shame
certain institutions and perhaps even to boycott them. Thanks very
(08:32):
much so.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
A little bit of context, which is the net Zero
Banking Alliance is part of this larger group called the
Glasgow Financial Alliance on net zero. It's a whole bunch
of financial institutions that voluntarily joined up these groups where
they were going to set targets about how they spend
their money, and ideally they spend it towards non carbon
(08:55):
stuff so that they are financed emissions emissions from things
that they are getting money to start to fall and
get to net zero. That was launched in twenty twenty one,
and there's been quite a lot of change since then.
First it went through this period where lots and lots
of financial institutions became part of it. Then starting with
the election of Donald Trump and the general push from
(09:17):
the US government against anything to do with climate they
started to pull out. There are still a few members left,
but largely those are now hollow institutions. Here Bloomberg, we've
covered them quite well. So to the question whether this
has meant that their activities have changed, actually they have not.
(09:37):
When we look at the numbers of how much money
they are lending to fossil fuel companies versus renewable energy companies,
their renewble energy lending has actually gone up and fossil
fuel lending has fallen over the past year. Now that
might seem like, okay, then why did you leave the
net zero Alliance? Partly it's politics. Partly is that oil
(09:58):
companies are making tons of and do not want financing
from banks, and so they don't need the money, and
so not enough money is going to fossil fuel companies.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
But the larger question is what do investors do as
a result of this?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, and that is not an easy question. There are
still banks that are part of the Net Zero Alliance
that are doing good things that investors could be investing in.
There are banks like City Bank, which left the Net
Zero Alliance but is actually going forward with all the
goal setting that the Net Zero Alliance wanted. But there
are also other banks which are annoyed by the behavior
(10:33):
of these banks, like Standard Chartered CEO came out and said,
it's shameful that these banks are leaving.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So some banks are using it their membership still as
a selling point.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
They are because there are still governments around the world
that are committed to climate action. I think the even
larger question here is that how far can voluntary action
go at all? Right, because this is all being done
by banks wanting to be a part of a group
that is signaling a good thing for society. And you
(11:06):
can go back in history and look at corporate voluntary
action in general. Most of the time these companies are
doing things like coming and setting rules and regulations among
themselves because they expect governments to come in and set regulations.
So they're like, well, well, you want safety in cars,
(11:27):
we'll figure out how to do seat belts, and hear
the rules in which we'll get all car companies to
make seed belts. And hey, government, look we've started doing this.
Why don't you just use these rules that we.
Speaker 7 (11:37):
Are all following.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Anyway, so it's a wait for them to get regulations
that are there. They don't want them, but if they're
going to come, let us get them in the way.
We want those regulations. And to some extent, you can
imagine that these net zero alliances were a step towards
that they were expecting governments to start to regulate the
finance industry and they wanted to be ahead that regulation.
(12:01):
In some cases it has happened, so the UK and
New Zealand are now mandating regulating financial institutions to report
metrics that were essentially voluntarily done previously, but now our regulations.
But we also get politics changing, and that means sometimes
the process doesn't go all the way to a regulation,
(12:23):
and you get to this midway point and everybody builds.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
But beyond the voluntary part of it and even the
regulatory part of it, from a banking standpoint, there's also
more of a conversation about transition risks, so investing in
an industry that could then be vulnerable to future regulation
or future lessened demand as a result of people realizing
(12:50):
the crimate crisis that we're actually in. So the transition
risk is actually one that's a calculated one, not necessarily
one from do gouddhism of trying to do the right thing.
And that's something that banks are sensitive to.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
That's right, they are, but not to the same extent
as they would be to government regulations coming in. So
there are clearly banks that are oriented towards clean energy spending.
There are even banks that want to differentiate as being
banks that have no fossil fuel exposure, like Triodos Bank
here in Europe, who advertise themselves as the green bank
(13:26):
that you all should put your accounts in and not
in any of these other banks that have quit the alliance.
And so that's the market you get where people want
to differentiate themselves. But as a scaled up action for
where the finance industry goes towards investments, you'll need regulations
to actually have needle moving impact.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
As a reporter, how do you know and how do
you trust that when people or organizations are making these pleasures,
so they actually believe in them rather than it just
being corporate green washing. So if you take yourself back
to twenty twenty one, twenty six up in Glasgow, when
a lot of this stuff is being made, did you
believe those promises at the time.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Well, specifically on finance, I don't think anybody believe them,
not even my colleagues here. But I would say green
promises from corporations are bigger than just financing institutions. Companies
like Google and Facebook and Meta and Microsoft have also
made lots of big green claims, and they've also made
(14:27):
lots of big emissions indeed, and so the way we
see those is not just believe them, but you know,
verify whether they are going in the right direction. So
Google is very clear in that they still want to
get to net zero by twenty thirty and get their
emissions for the past three four years have been going up,
and so they're saying we understand and we're going to
do something about it. But just verify whether they get
(14:50):
on track or not. Join us after the break for
more questions from Zero list and while I have you.
If you're enjoying this episode, please give Zero a review
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It's great to hear your
feedback and it helps other listeners find the show. In
(15:11):
a recent review, Marico said that Zero is informative and
excellent solutions journalism, in depth stories of practical solutions all
over the world.
Speaker 7 (15:21):
Thanks Marco.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Our next question comes from jau Baptista in Brazil, and
he asks who's actually going to buy green raw materials
like steel, ammonia and cement at scale. Living in a
developing country is hard to imagine people here paying, for example,
twenty percent more for a house, a fridge, or even
a bag of potatoes. Most of the demand seems to
(15:55):
be coming from the EU or from wealthier countries, and
I'm not sure that that's enough to justify the massive
investments to be made.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Well, the theory was never the developing countries would The
idea is well developed countries put out all these emissions
and climate change largely, today's a problem of developed country emissions,
and that they will pay for it by actually bringing
the green premium down by paying for expensive green technologies
(16:22):
that once they become affordable, are then taken up by
developing countries. And we have seen it happen once. So
Germany was among the early adopters of solar power. They
had a policy that came out the energy when they
in the early two thousands, and they spent about a
trillion euros deploying lots of solar in Germany. But it
(16:44):
was very expensive solar and that created this market which
then of course China took on and now everybody can
afford solar. So it's happened once. It hasn't yet happened
in steel or cement or ammonia. But it's a very
good point that all of these things require different sets
of technologies, and some government or maybe some company if
(17:06):
it's the scale of a Microsoft, which is now buying
most of the carbon removal credits, could try and bring
down the cost of these technologies, but developing countries not
so much.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And even today, I mean, the question is one about demand,
and the assumption is that they need to be more
demand by spreading it geographically. But the fact is that
when you look at the demand for still in China,
in the US in bid manufacturing hubs, it dwarfs by
far the demand in developing nations. So it's not so
(17:38):
much an issue of geographics spread as much as an
issue of those who use the most for them to
actually make that transition.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
And there are countries in Africa that have ended up
using these green technologies once they've become cheap.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Right, Yes, I mean in developing countries there's always going
to be an issue of prices activity, which is only
because there is also much less of a responsibility as
far as the climate situation that we're in today. But
you do see that when it makes economic sense, people
will choose things that could then also be climate mitigating.
(18:15):
So one example that we've written about is how a
fuel subsidy, a fossil fuel subsidy was drastically reduced in
Nigeria and that directly influenced the rise of solar panels
and solar energy for households. So that's a direct impact
that may not have been motivated by climate considerations. It's
(18:35):
an economic decision but had a climate positive impact.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
And that's because so became the cheapest form of getting
energy over the field that was no longer subsidized exactly.
You know, is there an argument as well because you
look at the US, you look at the UK, there's
so much storytelling, for example, around cars about you go
on your road trip, you feel the thrum of the engine.
There's a real legacy of those technologies. But when you
look at developing countries where people might be buying their
first for the first time, no one in those famili's
(19:02):
got one that they don't have that fondness for their
old fossil fuel car that their dad used to drive,
and said they're looking at nice, shining, new electric cars
or checking hand allergic cars, whatever it is, and going, yes,
I'll have that instead because that's the new technology.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Well, I would say that that speaks to behaviors, so
they need to change behaviors as well. And I think
that is actually also relevant to a global self context.
Maybe not so much for cars, but I'm thinking of
generator since I mentioned Nigeria, and it's just a tradition.
You go, the light to go off, you go put
(19:37):
your generator on, and it's polluting and it's noisy, but
people are just used to it and so for a
long time actually, so the energy was almost on par
at least on a long term perspective, because there's a
big upfront cost, but then you don't have to pay anymore,
(19:57):
not very much at least, And so they were it's
really this thing of the behavioral change. Like I'm used
to putting on my generator. Why would I pay this
big upfront cost and then even though I know on
the long term it's a saving. But it's not until
the price was significantly lower than fossil fuel energy that
you started to see people really like check their behavior
(20:20):
and say, okay, well, I'm going to overlook this tradition
that I have and actually try this new technology and
then create a new behavioral pattern. But behavior is actually
a big part of what's needed for the energy transition,
beyond the cost.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Culturally speaking, it's not like there are not enough movies
or TV shows or social media now to encourage your
high carbon lifestyle and developing countries. Right even when I
was growing up in the nineties, we had movies where
they used to shoot them in Switzerland, so that you
felt like you wanted to travel to Switzerland because ooh,
film stars go there. There's always a way in which
(20:57):
marketing either that's through movies are through direct advertising will
make you want what others have, and I think that
is a behavior change I don't think is going to happen.
People will still want what others have. We just need
to make what others have cool and green.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Our next question comes from Ian Mears in the UK.
Why do you think there's still so much climate change
denial and active efforts to delay trying to fix it?
With extreme weather becoming far more frequent, it seems a
bizarre stance to take. And when I last checked, we
still don't have a backup planet to move to when
(21:38):
this one becomes uninhabitable.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Climate change general feels like a big thing. Actually, the
number of people who are climate change denials has been shrinking,
and largely they've been in anglosphere, so they've been in UK, US,
Australia has been well studied and also a lot of
climate change denial that has been funded has come from
(22:04):
countries like the US, where fossil fuel lobbyists or fossil
fuel companies have then funded campaigns to create propaganda. So
doubt run New York Times advertorials in the nineties that
stop legislation on climate from taking hold, it might feel
(22:24):
a little particularly loud right now because the US government
and a lot of cabinet members in the US government
are talking essentially climate denier talking points right now. But
it is worth recognizing this is not a phenomena that
exists globally everywhere, and it's loud. It's perhaps your feed
(22:44):
about it or media coverage about it might make it
seem it's louder than it actually is.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
But we are seeing a kind of resurgent right wing
of politics who are very climate denialists in many countries,
like even in the UK, we once had cross party
consensus between the two main parties, so lease between Conservatives
and Labor saying we want to reach net zero. The
Conservative Party introduce the net zero target by twenty fifty
for the UK, and yet they're also now the one
(23:12):
who are saying, oh no, we don't want to do
this anymore. It's a silly idea, is it.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Really climate denihilism or maybe choosing because it is a cost.
There's a cost to the transition, a clean energy transition,
but is also a cost to continuing as business as usual.
Both ways, economies are going to lose, and the idea
(23:35):
is that our governments are bold enough to make short
term losses for longer term gains. And I think that's
the issue with the election cycle. You're talking about right
wing movements. People are concerned about securing the next election
and maybe not willing to make those longer term bets
(23:56):
that would ultimately save the economies but in the short
cost more.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
And it's true, you know, like you ask an Indian
farmer who's been farming for the last thirty years, and
they will tell you something is wrong with how life
is going right now. This is not what the weather
used to be thirty years ago. They may not always
be able to point to climate change because the level
of education. What's the experience like for African farmers.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I mean, I'll speak to African farmers, but I think
what you have pointed to is not just a level
of education, but also a language when we talk about
climate change. I mean, we got to interview here some
leaders from the Amazon and they were saying Mother Earth
is sick, and it's still climate change, but we're using
a different language, and so maybe that's also the point
(24:46):
of view from when the Indian farmer may be looking
at it. But speaking to the African context, there was
actually a report that said that about three fifths of
Africans and this was twenty eight countries, was three fifth
of Africans were aware of climate change. Out of that share,
about eighty percent said that their life was worse for it.
(25:09):
So they're intimately feeling the impact of climate change, which
is worth more than any scientific study about climate change itself.
And so you see that also because Africa is one
of the worst impacted parts of the world when it
comes to climate change. So actually in that report, one
of the countries where there was the most awareness was
(25:30):
Mauritious and it's not a coincidence that Mauritius was recently
hit by a cyclone that was very devastating. But then
even when you look at other parts of the continent.
In West Africa, the Sahel region is a big climate
hotspot with the worst heat waves that been in the UK,
and we're talking about heat waves, but there we're talking
about temperatures over forty degrees for more than three days,
(25:53):
and so you have cattle literally dying from heat stress
or lack of water or lack of pasture of grazing land.
So there you have impacts on people but also their livelihoods,
and so they're feeling it. Intimately, no one needs even
if they don't know the word climate change, they're feeling it.
(26:14):
They can't deny it, and they're not denying it. But
the issue then becomes do we have the resources and
the capacity to deal with it? And so that's why
governments are increasingly calling for adaptation finance to be able
to fend off the worst impacts of climate change.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
And so our final question for this week comes from
Sheres Patanka, who's based in Canada, and I think it
touches on a lot of the points that you've just
raised their Yinka, and I want to put it to
both of you, and the question is given the Western
governments are stepping back from climate and I think in
particular the US, do you see opportunities for climate activists
and the clean tech industry in the West to partner
with governments or corporate entities in China on areas of
(26:56):
shared interest, namely decarbonization.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yes, definitely, I see a rapprochement with China on all levels,
at least in the African context, as a partner that's
taking more importance. China holds its conference called the Fukak Summit,
where it basically it's in the Africa Summit where African leaders.
Virtually all the African leaders went in the last one
(27:22):
in September twenty twenty four. But what's very interesting is
that that summit has traditionally been about its Belt and
Road initiative and how it invests on the African continent.
That initiative is becoming greener. The Chinese government has said
that it's looking to do more clean energy projects. We
don't know yet if that's what's going to happen on
(27:42):
the ground, but there is that thinking behind how the
BRI is going to evolve. One is going to be greener,
and also it's going to be smaller initiative that will
be easier to execute. So we're waiting to see if
that happens. But within that context, there's also been a
conversation about technology transfer and making sure that some of
(28:03):
that technology comes back to Africa, and that's quite different
because usually China has been a place where companies and
government come to Africa for materials for resources and it's
basically shipped to China and manufactured there. So it would
be interesting to see if we actually see these projects
and whether some of that technology actually comes back to
(28:25):
Africa because a big, big issue, maybe even bigger than
climate right now for Africans these jobs. So it's really
important to create green jobs to go along with this
greener transition.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
And we are already seeing that in terms of technologies
that are already cheaper. It doesn't matter for developing countries
whether it's coming from China or not. So Pakistan last
year brought as many solar panels to power twenty five
percent of It's great if it had installed them all together.
This year is doing the same thing with batteries. We
(29:00):
also know that countries that are politically aligned with China
to some extent will welcome Chinese companies to come to
their markets and produce those goods. So Hungary in the
European Union has been attracting companies like bid An Electric
Car Company or COTL or Electric Car battery Company, or
(29:22):
in Brazil, which has very good relations right now with China,
where bd has opened a factory. A lot of Brazilian
cars are dual fuel, so they'll run on gasoline or
ethanol being locally produced in Brazil. And yet Brazil is
welcoming of Chinese electric cars because Brazil also has very
(29:43):
cheap green electricity coming from hydromostly and so economically it's
advantageous their jobs, cheaper cars, cheaper fuel, why not. We
are definitely seeing China use sort of the brick card Brazil, Russia, India, China.
Plus now they've got Saudi Arabia in there and UE
in there as a way to promote their green technologies.
(30:06):
So the Arabia was one of the biggest importers of
solar in recent years. So it is true that the
home for green technologies is much bigger outside of the US.
You know, the US is, okay, twenty five percent of
the global economy in economic terms, twelve percent of its emissions.
It's a big world out there, and right now China
(30:28):
is setting itself up for being the place to get
green tech. Well, that brings an end to this first
ever mailbag episodes. Thanks again to everyone who's sent questions
in for us, and we'd love to do this kind
of episode again in the future. So if you do
have a burning question having listened to this that you
want to send to the Zero team, to Accha, or
to anyone else working at Bloomberg Green, please send that
(30:49):
question to zero Pod at Bloomberg dot net Acua, Yinka,
thank you very much, thank you, thank you, and thank
you for listening to zero. And now for the sound
of the week. That is the sound of new trains
(31:17):
being tested on London's Piccadilly Line. These new trains will
go into service early next year and will be finally
fitted with air conditioning. You can read more about how
the London Underground is coping with heat in a story
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(31:38):
friend or with someone who has questions about the climate.
This episode was produced by Oscar Boyd and Yinka ibukum Our.
Theme music is composed by Wonderly Special. Thanks to Eleanor Harrison, Dngate, Samersadi,
Moses Andim and Shawan Wagner. I'm Akshadrati back soon.
Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshatarati. This week we hear from you.
A few weeks ago we put out a call to
our listeners for questions. Thank you to everyone who'll sent
(00:22):
them in. We've got a great response, and in this
episode we will try to answer as many of them
as we can. To help me do that, we've got
Bloomberg Senior Africa reporter Yinka Ibukun and Zero's producer Oscar Boyd.
Welcome back to Zero, Yinka and Oscar.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
So.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Our first question comes from beat Koch from Switzerland, and
he asks, I.
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Was wondering if in the end the tariff politics of
Donald Trump might help the environment and reduce CO two emissions.
If international trade falls significantly, CO two emissions will go down,
which is what we want and need most at the moment.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
So akshat Donald Trump has started at tariff, is he
also a climate warrior in disguise?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Well, wouldn't that be nice? I mean the implication here
is that less trade will mean less goods are shipped
around the world, and thus there will be fewer CO
two emissions because a lot of shipping fuel is really
bad bunker fuel it's very carbon intensive. But that I
think is a very short term way of thinking about it,
(01:31):
because lower trade could also mean lower economic growth, and
that could also mean lower emissions. So the perhaps reduction
in CO two could be even greater, not just from
a reduction in the volume of trade, but just reduction
in economic activity. Now, be careful, this is not the
(01:51):
kind of climate action we want. We want economies to
grow and reduce their emissions because that's what people want.
And so if you want political action for climate, you
want people to be happy that their economies are growing
and their emissions are reducing.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
Basically, because you're saying that if the trade war is
as bad as we feel or think it might be,
then people who rely on those jobs are going to
lose their jobs. And that means yes, maybe similar carbon emissions,
but it also means people who are out of work.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
That's right, And then there are secondary implications too. So
say you're trading less, it doesn't mean that the countries
demand for those products is gotten down. So you're going
to try and manufacture it at home, and if you
do that, you're going to have to build a new factory.
You'll have to come up with new processes, think of
a new supply chain and all that will also have
a carbon impact that we are not counting right now.
(02:45):
But there is a way in which you can use
trade for climate and that's what the European Union is
doing with its carbon border adjustment mechanism. And here's a
concrete example on how that can have a carbon impact.
So say you're steelmaker in European Union. You make your steel,
you produce about one point eight tons of carbon dioxide
(03:06):
emissions for every ton of steel. You're a Chinese maker,
and on average a Chinese maker is putting out two
point two tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of
CO two. But China makes it cheap, and the European
car maker wants to get cheap steel, and so they
just buy the Chinese steel, don't really think about carbon,
(03:26):
and the European Union like, stop, we don't want that.
We want you to reduce their emissions. And so if
China wants to send their steel to us, if their
emissions are more than European Union, they have to pay
a price on top. And so for the point four
tons of emissions they're going to have to pay in
current price about thirty dollars per ton of steel that
(03:49):
they export to the European Union, and that's an additional price,
and that will make the Chinese steelmaker want to reduce
their emissions, and we'll see if that works. But if
you really want to use trade to cut emissions, that's
the way to go.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
So our next question comes from Eleanor Harrison Dengate, who's
a producer on Bloomberg's daily podcast, which is called The
Big Take, and her question arose after a trip she
recently took.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
Hi Action and the Zero Team. I just had a
holiday in what you would definitely call oil country, specifically
in Calgary, Canada, where basically the whole city is built
off oil, and I met a lot of people there
who were very pro oil and very anti renewable energy.
And one of the concerns that they would bring up
about renewable energy when I asked them about this, was
(04:37):
that they said that renewable energy will never be dense
enough compared to fossil fuels or nuclear And I was
wondering if there's any truth in what they're saying, and
if that is the case that renewables aren't dense enough, now,
is there a way in the future where we will
see more dense renewable energies. Anyway, thanks very much and love.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
The show, Eleanor nice to hear from you, and I'm
sorry you were caught in propaganda from the fossil fuel
industry and even the nuclear industry. There is some factual
basis to that question, so let me first go through
that and tell you why that is propaganda. The factual
part is energy density is a real metric. If we
(05:20):
take crude oil and say crude oil has one unit
of energy density, then nuclear fission. So the thing that
most nuclear power plants are made of, which is uranium fuel,
has a few hundred thousand times as much energy density
as crude oil, and if you wanted to go one up,
if you went to nuclear fusion fuel. So the thing
(05:41):
that powers the sun that has seven million times the
energy density, and then solar and wind are thousands of
times lower energy density than oil. So factually that makes
for a good argument. The problem is it's not really
about energy density most of the time. Sometimes it is
(06:01):
you want to fly on a trans atlantic flight, you
want an energy dense fuel because you only want to
fuel once and be able to travel thousands of kilometers
and land safely.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
So you're saying we should make nuclear power planes.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Well, the trouble is it's not just the fuel. How
you convert the fuel into usable energy also matters, and
so your jet fuel is very good at not just
being energy dense, but also very good at converting that
energy density into motion. Nuclear terrible. So there are no
(06:34):
plans yet to make nuclear power planes. There might be
nuclear rocket engines at some point that are not going
to take off from the planet but may travel between stars.
But you know we're going down science fiction right now,
let's come back to Earth. The thing that really matters
is cost. At what cost and what availability Do you
(06:55):
get the fuel you want when you want to use it,
and when you use it how efficiently are you able
to use it? So twentieth century was the century of
oil because well, Winston Churchill decided coal powered boats aren't
going to win the war. We need oil powered ships,
and that's what he made a big bet on. That's
(07:17):
probably what helped Britain able to fight in World War Two.
It also helped power all the cars that we developed
in the twentieth century. But we know that an electric
car now can do essentially all the things that a
fossil fuel car can do, and do it cheaply, and
do it in a way that is more efficient, because
your electric car is going four times the distance for
(07:40):
the same amount of energy as your fossil fuel car does.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
This question is from Doug Bamford, who's a lecture based
in Oxfordshire, and he wants to know.
Speaker 6 (07:50):
My question is about the finance industry and the climate change,
because I've seen headlines recently that US financial institutions have
pulled out of the net zero Banking Alliance that now
includes some UK headquartered banks as well, like HSBC and Barclay's,
and I'm wondering if this represents a major change in
(08:12):
the activities of these institutions, and if it is a
change even the mind one, then perhaps should climate conscious
investors and consumers of banking services be looking to shame
certain institutions and perhaps even to boycott them. Thanks very
(08:32):
much so.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
A little bit of context, which is the net Zero
Banking Alliance is part of this larger group called the
Glasgow Financial Alliance on net zero. It's a whole bunch
of financial institutions that voluntarily joined up these groups where
they were going to set targets about how they spend
their money, and ideally they spend it towards non carbon
(08:55):
stuff so that they are financed emissions emissions from things
that they are getting money to start to fall and
get to net zero. That was launched in twenty twenty one,
and there's been quite a lot of change since then.
First it went through this period where lots and lots
of financial institutions became part of it. Then starting with
the election of Donald Trump and the general push from
(09:17):
the US government against anything to do with climate they
started to pull out. There are still a few members left,
but largely those are now hollow institutions. Here Bloomberg, we've
covered them quite well. So to the question whether this
has meant that their activities have changed, actually they have not.
(09:37):
When we look at the numbers of how much money
they are lending to fossil fuel companies versus renewable energy companies,
their renewble energy lending has actually gone up and fossil
fuel lending has fallen over the past year. Now that
might seem like, okay, then why did you leave the
net zero Alliance? Partly it's politics. Partly is that oil
(09:58):
companies are making tons of and do not want financing
from banks, and so they don't need the money, and
so not enough money is going to fossil fuel companies.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
But the larger question is what do investors do as
a result of this?
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Yeah, and that is not an easy question. There are
still banks that are part of the Net Zero Alliance
that are doing good things that investors could be investing in.
There are banks like City Bank, which left the Net
Zero Alliance but is actually going forward with all the
goal setting that the Net Zero Alliance wanted. But there
are also other banks which are annoyed by the behavior
(10:33):
of these banks, like Standard Chartered CEO came out and said,
it's shameful that these banks are leaving.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So some banks are using it their membership still as
a selling point.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
They are because there are still governments around the world
that are committed to climate action. I think the even
larger question here is that how far can voluntary action
go at all? Right, because this is all being done
by banks wanting to be a part of a group
that is signaling a good thing for society. And you
(11:06):
can go back in history and look at corporate voluntary
action in general. Most of the time these companies are
doing things like coming and setting rules and regulations among
themselves because they expect governments to come in and set regulations.
So they're like, well, well, you want safety in cars,
(11:27):
we'll figure out how to do seat belts, and hear
the rules in which we'll get all car companies to
make seed belts. And hey, government, look we've started doing this.
Why don't you just use these rules that we.
Speaker 7 (11:37):
Are all following.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Anyway, so it's a wait for them to get regulations
that are there. They don't want them, but if they're
going to come, let us get them in the way.
We want those regulations. And to some extent, you can
imagine that these net zero alliances were a step towards
that they were expecting governments to start to regulate the
finance industry and they wanted to be ahead that regulation.
(12:01):
In some cases it has happened, so the UK and
New Zealand are now mandating regulating financial institutions to report
metrics that were essentially voluntarily done previously, but now our regulations.
But we also get politics changing, and that means sometimes
the process doesn't go all the way to a regulation,
(12:23):
and you get to this midway point and everybody builds.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
But beyond the voluntary part of it and even the
regulatory part of it, from a banking standpoint, there's also
more of a conversation about transition risks, so investing in
an industry that could then be vulnerable to future regulation
or future lessened demand as a result of people realizing
(12:50):
the crimate crisis that we're actually in. So the transition
risk is actually one that's a calculated one, not necessarily
one from do gouddhism of trying to do the right thing.
And that's something that banks are sensitive to.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
That's right, they are, but not to the same extent
as they would be to government regulations coming in. So
there are clearly banks that are oriented towards clean energy spending.
There are even banks that want to differentiate as being
banks that have no fossil fuel exposure, like Triodos Bank
here in Europe, who advertise themselves as the green bank
(13:26):
that you all should put your accounts in and not
in any of these other banks that have quit the alliance.
And so that's the market you get where people want
to differentiate themselves. But as a scaled up action for
where the finance industry goes towards investments, you'll need regulations
to actually have needle moving impact.
Speaker 3 (13:48):
As a reporter, how do you know and how do
you trust that when people or organizations are making these pleasures,
so they actually believe in them rather than it just
being corporate green washing. So if you take yourself back
to twenty twenty one, twenty six up in Glasgow, when
a lot of this stuff is being made, did you
believe those promises at the time.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Well, specifically on finance, I don't think anybody believe them,
not even my colleagues here. But I would say green
promises from corporations are bigger than just financing institutions. Companies
like Google and Facebook and Meta and Microsoft have also
made lots of big green claims, and they've also made
(14:27):
lots of big emissions indeed, and so the way we
see those is not just believe them, but you know,
verify whether they are going in the right direction. So
Google is very clear in that they still want to
get to net zero by twenty thirty and get their
emissions for the past three four years have been going up,
and so they're saying we understand and we're going to
do something about it. But just verify whether they get
(14:50):
on track or not. Join us after the break for
more questions from Zero list and while I have you.
If you're enjoying this episode, please give Zero a review
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It's great to hear your
feedback and it helps other listeners find the show. In
(15:11):
a recent review, Marico said that Zero is informative and
excellent solutions journalism, in depth stories of practical solutions all
over the world.
Speaker 7 (15:21):
Thanks Marco.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Our next question comes from jau Baptista in Brazil, and
he asks who's actually going to buy green raw materials
like steel, ammonia and cement at scale. Living in a
developing country is hard to imagine people here paying, for example,
twenty percent more for a house, a fridge, or even
a bag of potatoes. Most of the demand seems to
(15:55):
be coming from the EU or from wealthier countries, and
I'm not sure that that's enough to justify the massive
investments to be made.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Well, the theory was never the developing countries would The
idea is well developed countries put out all these emissions
and climate change largely, today's a problem of developed country emissions,
and that they will pay for it by actually bringing
the green premium down by paying for expensive green technologies
(16:22):
that once they become affordable, are then taken up by
developing countries. And we have seen it happen once. So
Germany was among the early adopters of solar power. They
had a policy that came out the energy when they
in the early two thousands, and they spent about a
trillion euros deploying lots of solar in Germany. But it
(16:44):
was very expensive solar and that created this market which
then of course China took on and now everybody can
afford solar. So it's happened once. It hasn't yet happened
in steel or cement or ammonia. But it's a very
good point that all of these things require different sets
of technologies, and some government or maybe some company if
(17:06):
it's the scale of a Microsoft, which is now buying
most of the carbon removal credits, could try and bring
down the cost of these technologies, but developing countries not
so much.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And even today, I mean, the question is one about demand,
and the assumption is that they need to be more
demand by spreading it geographically. But the fact is that
when you look at the demand for still in China,
in the US in bid manufacturing hubs, it dwarfs by
far the demand in developing nations. So it's not so
(17:38):
much an issue of geographics spread as much as an
issue of those who use the most for them to
actually make that transition.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
And there are countries in Africa that have ended up
using these green technologies once they've become cheap.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Right, Yes, I mean in developing countries there's always going
to be an issue of prices activity, which is only
because there is also much less of a responsibility as
far as the climate situation that we're in today. But
you do see that when it makes economic sense, people
will choose things that could then also be climate mitigating.
(18:15):
So one example that we've written about is how a
fuel subsidy, a fossil fuel subsidy was drastically reduced in
Nigeria and that directly influenced the rise of solar panels
and solar energy for households. So that's a direct impact
that may not have been motivated by climate considerations. It's
(18:35):
an economic decision but had a climate positive impact.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
And that's because so became the cheapest form of getting
energy over the field that was no longer subsidized exactly.
You know, is there an argument as well because you
look at the US, you look at the UK, there's
so much storytelling, for example, around cars about you go
on your road trip, you feel the thrum of the engine.
There's a real legacy of those technologies. But when you
look at developing countries where people might be buying their
first for the first time, no one in those famili's
(19:02):
got one that they don't have that fondness for their
old fossil fuel car that their dad used to drive,
and said they're looking at nice, shining, new electric cars
or checking hand allergic cars, whatever it is, and going, yes,
I'll have that instead because that's the new technology.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Well, I would say that that speaks to behaviors, so
they need to change behaviors as well. And I think
that is actually also relevant to a global self context.
Maybe not so much for cars, but I'm thinking of
generator since I mentioned Nigeria, and it's just a tradition.
You go, the light to go off, you go put
(19:37):
your generator on, and it's polluting and it's noisy, but
people are just used to it and so for a
long time actually, so the energy was almost on par
at least on a long term perspective, because there's a
big upfront cost, but then you don't have to pay anymore,
(19:57):
not very much at least, And so they were it's
really this thing of the behavioral change. Like I'm used
to putting on my generator. Why would I pay this
big upfront cost and then even though I know on
the long term it's a saving. But it's not until
the price was significantly lower than fossil fuel energy that
you started to see people really like check their behavior
(20:20):
and say, okay, well, I'm going to overlook this tradition
that I have and actually try this new technology and
then create a new behavioral pattern. But behavior is actually
a big part of what's needed for the energy transition,
beyond the cost.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Culturally speaking, it's not like there are not enough movies
or TV shows or social media now to encourage your
high carbon lifestyle and developing countries. Right even when I
was growing up in the nineties, we had movies where
they used to shoot them in Switzerland, so that you
felt like you wanted to travel to Switzerland because ooh,
film stars go there. There's always a way in which
(20:57):
marketing either that's through movies are through direct advertising will
make you want what others have, and I think that
is a behavior change I don't think is going to happen.
People will still want what others have. We just need
to make what others have cool and green.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Our next question comes from Ian Mears in the UK.
Why do you think there's still so much climate change
denial and active efforts to delay trying to fix it?
With extreme weather becoming far more frequent, it seems a
bizarre stance to take. And when I last checked, we
still don't have a backup planet to move to when
(21:38):
this one becomes uninhabitable.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Climate change general feels like a big thing. Actually, the
number of people who are climate change denials has been shrinking,
and largely they've been in anglosphere, so they've been in UK, US,
Australia has been well studied and also a lot of
climate change denial that has been funded has come from
(22:04):
countries like the US, where fossil fuel lobbyists or fossil
fuel companies have then funded campaigns to create propaganda. So
doubt run New York Times advertorials in the nineties that
stop legislation on climate from taking hold, it might feel
(22:24):
a little particularly loud right now because the US government
and a lot of cabinet members in the US government
are talking essentially climate denier talking points right now. But
it is worth recognizing this is not a phenomena that
exists globally everywhere, and it's loud. It's perhaps your feed
(22:44):
about it or media coverage about it might make it
seem it's louder than it actually is.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
But we are seeing a kind of resurgent right wing
of politics who are very climate denialists in many countries,
like even in the UK, we once had cross party
consensus between the two main parties, so lease between Conservatives
and Labor saying we want to reach net zero. The
Conservative Party introduce the net zero target by twenty fifty
for the UK, and yet they're also now the one
(23:12):
who are saying, oh no, we don't want to do
this anymore. It's a silly idea, is it.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Really climate denihilism or maybe choosing because it is a cost.
There's a cost to the transition, a clean energy transition,
but is also a cost to continuing as business as usual.
Both ways, economies are going to lose, and the idea
(23:35):
is that our governments are bold enough to make short
term losses for longer term gains. And I think that's
the issue with the election cycle. You're talking about right
wing movements. People are concerned about securing the next election
and maybe not willing to make those longer term bets
(23:56):
that would ultimately save the economies but in the short
cost more.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
And it's true, you know, like you ask an Indian
farmer who's been farming for the last thirty years, and
they will tell you something is wrong with how life
is going right now. This is not what the weather
used to be thirty years ago. They may not always
be able to point to climate change because the level
of education. What's the experience like for African farmers.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I mean, I'll speak to African farmers, but I think
what you have pointed to is not just a level
of education, but also a language when we talk about
climate change. I mean, we got to interview here some
leaders from the Amazon and they were saying Mother Earth
is sick, and it's still climate change, but we're using
a different language, and so maybe that's also the point
(24:46):
of view from when the Indian farmer may be looking
at it. But speaking to the African context, there was
actually a report that said that about three fifths of
Africans and this was twenty eight countries, was three fifth
of Africans were aware of climate change. Out of that share,
about eighty percent said that their life was worse for it.
(25:09):
So they're intimately feeling the impact of climate change, which
is worth more than any scientific study about climate change itself.
And so you see that also because Africa is one
of the worst impacted parts of the world when it
comes to climate change. So actually in that report, one
of the countries where there was the most awareness was
(25:30):
Mauritious and it's not a coincidence that Mauritius was recently
hit by a cyclone that was very devastating. But then
even when you look at other parts of the continent.
In West Africa, the Sahel region is a big climate
hotspot with the worst heat waves that been in the UK,
and we're talking about heat waves, but there we're talking
about temperatures over forty degrees for more than three days,
(25:53):
and so you have cattle literally dying from heat stress
or lack of water or lack of pasture of grazing land.
So there you have impacts on people but also their livelihoods,
and so they're feeling it. Intimately, no one needs even
if they don't know the word climate change, they're feeling it.
(26:14):
They can't deny it, and they're not denying it. But
the issue then becomes do we have the resources and
the capacity to deal with it? And so that's why
governments are increasingly calling for adaptation finance to be able
to fend off the worst impacts of climate change.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
And so our final question for this week comes from
Sheres Patanka, who's based in Canada, and I think it
touches on a lot of the points that you've just
raised their Yinka, and I want to put it to
both of you, and the question is given the Western
governments are stepping back from climate and I think in
particular the US, do you see opportunities for climate activists
and the clean tech industry in the West to partner
with governments or corporate entities in China on areas of
(26:56):
shared interest, namely decarbonization.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yes, definitely, I see a rapprochement with China on all levels,
at least in the African context, as a partner that's
taking more importance. China holds its conference called the Fukak Summit,
where it basically it's in the Africa Summit where African leaders.
Virtually all the African leaders went in the last one
(27:22):
in September twenty twenty four. But what's very interesting is
that that summit has traditionally been about its Belt and
Road initiative and how it invests on the African continent.
That initiative is becoming greener. The Chinese government has said
that it's looking to do more clean energy projects. We
don't know yet if that's what's going to happen on
(27:42):
the ground, but there is that thinking behind how the
BRI is going to evolve. One is going to be greener,
and also it's going to be smaller initiative that will
be easier to execute. So we're waiting to see if
that happens. But within that context, there's also been a
conversation about technology transfer and making sure that some of
(28:03):
that technology comes back to Africa, and that's quite different
because usually China has been a place where companies and
government come to Africa for materials for resources and it's
basically shipped to China and manufactured there. So it would
be interesting to see if we actually see these projects
and whether some of that technology actually comes back to
(28:25):
Africa because a big, big issue, maybe even bigger than
climate right now for Africans these jobs. So it's really
important to create green jobs to go along with this
greener transition.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
And we are already seeing that in terms of technologies
that are already cheaper. It doesn't matter for developing countries
whether it's coming from China or not. So Pakistan last
year brought as many solar panels to power twenty five
percent of It's great if it had installed them all together.
This year is doing the same thing with batteries. We
(29:00):
also know that countries that are politically aligned with China
to some extent will welcome Chinese companies to come to
their markets and produce those goods. So Hungary in the
European Union has been attracting companies like bid An Electric
Car Company or COTL or Electric Car battery Company, or
(29:22):
in Brazil, which has very good relations right now with China,
where bd has opened a factory. A lot of Brazilian
cars are dual fuel, so they'll run on gasoline or
ethanol being locally produced in Brazil. And yet Brazil is
welcoming of Chinese electric cars because Brazil also has very
(29:43):
cheap green electricity coming from hydromostly and so economically it's
advantageous their jobs, cheaper cars, cheaper fuel, why not. We
are definitely seeing China use sort of the brick card Brazil, Russia, India, China.
Plus now they've got Saudi Arabia in there and UE
in there as a way to promote their green technologies.
(30:06):
So the Arabia was one of the biggest importers of
solar in recent years. So it is true that the
home for green technologies is much bigger outside of the US.
You know, the US is, okay, twenty five percent of
the global economy in economic terms, twelve percent of its emissions.
It's a big world out there, and right now China
(30:28):
is setting itself up for being the place to get
green tech. Well, that brings an end to this first
ever mailbag episodes. Thanks again to everyone who's sent questions
in for us, and we'd love to do this kind
of episode again in the future. So if you do
have a burning question having listened to this that you
want to send to the Zero team, to Accha, or
to anyone else working at Bloomberg Green, please send that
(30:49):
question to zero Pod at Bloomberg dot net Acua, Yinka,
thank you very much, thank you, thank you, and thank
you for listening to zero. And now for the sound
of the week. That is the sound of new trains
(31:17):
being tested on London's Piccadilly Line. These new trains will
go into service early next year and will be finally
fitted with air conditioning. You can read more about how
the London Underground is coping with heat in a story
we've linked in the show notes. If you like this episode,
please take a moment to rate and review the show
on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Share this episode with a
(31:38):
friend or with someone who has questions about the climate.
This episode was produced by Oscar Boyd and Yinka ibukum Our.
Theme music is composed by Wonderly Special. Thanks to Eleanor Harrison, Dngate, Samersadi,
Moses Andim and Shawan Wagner. I'm Akshadrati back soon.
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