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Prime Minister Scott Morrison – Scott Morrison brings a lump of coal into parliament’ on The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-a-chunk-of-coal-into-parliament-video

This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared.

The Speaker, House of Representatives:

The treasurer knows the rule on props.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison – Scott Morrison brings a lump of coal into parliament’ on The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-a-chunk-of-coal-into-parliament-video

It’s coal. It was dug up by men and women who work and live in the electorates of those who sit opposite.

Erika Wagner:

In 2017, Scott Morrison brought a lump of coal into parliament a year before he became PM. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared,” he said. But most of the world has done the maths and they’re leaving coal in the ground.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison:

There’s no word for coalaphobia officially, Mr Speaker. But that’s the malady that is afflicting the jobs in the towns and the industries, and, indeed, in this country, because of their pathological ideological opposition to coal being an important part of our sustainable and more certain energy future.

Erika Wagner:

If Australia did go off coal, you might be led to think it would cause an economic disaster for our country. After all, we’re the world’s largest exporter of the stuff. But the world hasn’t suddenly become climate activists overnight. Instead it’s economics that is driving this shift. Big business realise the risks associated with investing in coal and divestment is now actively underway. Countries like India are already making changes to their energy sources right now, as they invest in the cheaper alternatives of wind and solar. But Australia is still operating under an old paradigm. And it’s fair to say that both our private sector and governments have some catching up to do.

Erika Wagner:

This is what we’ll be discussing in this episode of the UTS 4 Climate podcast. I’m Erica Wagner. I study Marine Science in Sydney, Australia. And in this conversation, UTS Industry Professor Bob Carr will be speaking to Tim Buckley. Tim is the Director of Energy Finance Studies Australasia at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. While the coronavirus pandemic spread rapidly around the world, both Tim and Bob were watching something else striking. Coal started losing ground in the global economy. Here’s Bob speaking to Tim in May of this year.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Tim, welcome to this program, to this discussion. And I want to start by asking you whether you were astonished when you saw how much was happening in the finance sector this year, while everyone was looking at the pandemic and its economic consequences, driven by banks and other financial institutions in a decisive move away from coal.

Tim Buckley:

I haven’t been surprised, but that’s probably because I’ve been very focused on it since a critical announcement that happened in the middle of January. And it was out of left field, it was unexpected. And I think it’s absolutely transformational for global finance and the global economy and for the entire debate in Australian language, but the acceptance of the science of the Paris Agreement and the science of climate change. And the event I’m talking about is in fact, the annual letter by Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock.

Erika Wagner:

And for those who don’t know, BlackRock is the largest money management firm in the world. In this decision, BlackRock said they’d be “exiting investments that present a high sustainability related risk, such as thermal coal producers.”

Tim Buckley:

BlackRock up until January of this year had effectively no climate policy. They’d put out research papers and they’d funded think tanks to analyse the stranded asset risks. They accepted Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor’s decisions about the risks, but they hadn’t done anything about it. And so out of left field, Larry Fink’s annual letter to every CEO of every corporate in the world was titled ‘The Changing Landscape’ or ‘Redefining Landscape of Finance’. And he was totally focused on the Paris climate agreement and how that would change everything when it comes to energy finance.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Would that have had an effect, for example, on something you drew to my attention, which was three big banks in Japan, making a decision to implement that policy? With Japan up till now having been seen as a laggard on climate policy.

Tim Buckley:

Very much so. I would say they’re totally interrelated. And the irony of it is that BlackRock’s decision in January actually stemmed from a decision that the Japanese pension plan investment group, a $1.5 trillion fund, the biggest pension asset owner in the world. And it was the CIO of the Japanese pension plan that took a $50 billion mandate off BlackRock in December 2019. And he gave it to Legal and General Investment Management. LGIM is a leader when it comes to environmental, social and governance implementation. And the CIO of the Japanese pension plan had spent seven years championing ESG, and he’d failed to get BlackRock to acknowledge it as a key global financial risk. And so by taking a $50 billion mandate off, it was no surprise to me that literally one month later BlackRock’s entire position changed and when BlackRock moves, the world moves.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

So that is fascinating to think that BlackRock had missed out on a heap of funds because it was adhering to conventional or old fashioned policies when it comes to climate.

Tim Buckley:

Correct. And so ultimately BlackRock is the ultimate pragmatist. They don’t have a philosophical issue. They have a fiduciary duty. And so a lot of the work I do is about, and Mark Carney I think the ex-governor of Bank of England summed it up beautifully. It’s the tragedy of the horizons. But as Geoff Summerhayes of APRA in Australia has pointed out, the horizon has narrowed and now is the time to act. So the fiduciary duty of directors is now “you must evaluate financial risks relating to climate change.” And so I think Geoff Summerhayes really encapsulated that beautifully in some of the speeches he’s been giving to the Australian financial market in the last four years. All of his lessons come from Mark Carney, the ex-governor of the Bank of England. And now BlackRock is embracing that.

Tim Buckley:

And if you look at what Larry Fink said in his letter, it’s very clear. He says, ‘we will divest thermal coal globally, debt and equity, and we’ll do it immediately because it’s no longer economically viable.’ He says, ‘sure, it’s not good for the climate, but we are ultimately a fiduciary duty, a manager of other people’s capital. We have the fiduciary duty as custodians to manage that wisely and to protect the capital.’

Tim Buckley:

So it’s the fiduciary argument that in my view is what’s driving the financial markets to move. Put morality aside. It’s the legal obligation of directors and trustees to protect capital. And Mark Carney and the Bank of England says there’s a $20 trillion train wreck coming. You actually have a fiduciary duty to change. And that’s exactly how APRA has interpreted it. And APRA has been putting huge pressure behind the scenes on transition planning, financial risk analysis. And all of our banks, our insurers, and our asset managers now are embracing that. They have no choice because APRA is telling them they have to.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Look at the BlackRock decision, that was in January. It would have created an atmosphere where when Royal Dutch Shell was considering its huge announcement on accepting Paris and getting out of carbon as they did in April. What I’m trying to say is that I suppose they had every excuse because of the pandemic, the economic crisis, the turmoil in oil and gas markets to have delayed that announcement, but they didn’t. They must’ve been encouraged by what BlackRock was saying in January. How do you rate the importance of the Royal Dutch Shell announcement made only in April?

Tim Buckley:

I think it’s not as pivotal as the BlackRock decision. It certainly flows from the BlackRock decision. The one which I think is pivotal was the announcement that BP’s new CEO, Bernard Looney, made in February. So to some degree Shell and Total of France are responding to the first mover, and the first mover was BP. Well, the first global oil and gas major to move was BP. So Bernard Looney was appointed CEO. He spent four months preparing to take on the CEO role. And I read an op-ed that he wrote about what influenced him. And he said he spent four months touring the world, looking at what he was going to do as the CEO of one of the most important energy companies in the world. And he said he had some phenomenally interesting discussions with unusual people. And I’d love to know who those people were because Bernard Looney was running the upstream oil and gas assets of BP.

Tim Buckley:

So he’s no renewable energy advocate. He is the CEO of a major company and yet his maiden speech was all about climate change. So effectively he’s bet his tenure as CEO on the basis that BP will transform, the leopard will change its spots. And I believe he will actually succeed or he’ll die trying. And I say that because it’s very unusual for a CEO to do that. But importantly that the CEO made it about one topic and that was adherence and delivery on the Paris climate agreement. So Shell and Total responded to BP. Maybe BlackRock gave Bernard Looney the opportunity to embrace what Larry Fink said because his single biggest shareholder had just told him you have the authority and in fact, the fiduciary duty to do it.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Irony abounds, as they say. In April, you had Donald Trump saying, “I’m happy to have drilling in the Arctic circle.” But Citi and Morgan Stanley, great symbols of American capitalism say, “In fact, we’re not doing it. We’re not going there.” Because they too have adopted climate policies.

Tim Buckley:

It is rather ironic. But then I suppose my background in finance is the opposite of yours in politics. And ultimately I might dare say, look, I think finance is more powerful than politics because by definition, politics is bound by limited tenures and getting reelected, whereas in finances, it’s just all about the power of money. And it’s a different perspective, it’s my perspective. But if you think about the energy markets, the energy markets globally involve $2 trillion a year of spending, capital spending in the main. $2 trillion a year. So over a decade, $20 trillion. So when the global energy markets move, the financial markets are a core partner to that because of the magnitude of money. It’s the single biggest investment in the world every year in one sector. And that is the energy sector.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Austria and Sweden in April. Again, I couldn’t get it until I spoke to you, I couldn’t grasp how much activity there had been in the month of April on climate. Coincidentally, that was the month that saw Austria and Sweden announce the closure of their last coal fired power plants. Joining Belgium as the European countries have said in effect, “When it comes to power we are coal free.”

Tim Buckley:

It is staggering. There is this global movement, which is powering past coal and that movement is all about trying to drive home the global importance of the Paris climate agreement. And the fact that it’s a global problem, like the global pandemic and it needs a global response. So particularly when the president of the most powerful country in the world says he’s going to walk away from the Paris agreement. You actually need other actors to step up. And we’ve seen that with California. California is the absolute world leader when it comes to embracing. Arnold Schwarzenegger was an advocate for renewable energy 15, 20 years ago, when he was governor of California. Now they’ve got a zero emissions target for 2045 and they’re 100% on track for it. That’s probably the sixth biggest economy in the world in isolation, just California. And they’re 100% on track.

Tim Buckley:

So when you’ve got a state like California willing to speak up, when you’ve got a state like New York willing to speak up, when you have countries like Sweden and Belgium and Austria and Portugal, because Portugal is going coal free now. But then I work in India as my main market and Delhi is talking about going coal free. Now it’s a bit symbolic because India is the second biggest producer and consumer of coal. But because of the rampant air pollution in the capital city of the most populous country in the world killing the population, killing the politicians and their children, Delhi is moving decisively to deal with the air pollution issue and hence to deal with coal, the biggest source of air pollution.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

I’d been invited to go to a conference in Delhi. And I had to say to my interlocutor, there’s no way I would go there. I’ve been in Beijing when the pollution has hung heavy in the air and you couldn’t see across the street. Now that’s been cleared up pretty dramatically. But when you’re told that the pollution in Delhi is four times worse than that in Beijing, I find that a threat to my peace of mind. I couldn’t be there even in a hotel with treated air and be comfortable. If someone had said in the Club of Rome report in the late 1960s, there will come a day when the air in big capital cities will be this bad, no one would have believed it. It would have been more fantastical than anything in science-fiction. But we live with that today. And therefore getting me on the stuff that we spoke about, tell us about India, because if you can give us good news about India contemplating a future beyond coal, it’s very good news for the planet.

Tim Buckley:

I am one of the major optimists in the global energy markets when it comes to India. And in fact, over the last four years, I’ve actually pivoted our whole focus to, as you mentioned in the introduction, South Asia. Majority of my work and my team is actually focused on India. And that is India is the largest population mass in the world. It is the third largest electricity market. It’s overtaken America to be the second largest producer and consumer of coal. So it is also the second largest importer of coal in the world. So it’s absolutely pivotal to the achievement or otherwise of Paris.

Tim Buckley:

Now, one of the key issues I come across, particularly as a foreign Anglo, it’s really obvious when you go to India, you cannot talk about climate as a westerner in their country. They can talk about it. But at the end of the day, Prime Minister Modi is very patriotic. He’s very nationalistic. His country is very proud. And the Paris agreement is all about common but differentiated responsibilities. We caused the problem. We want India to fix the problem. Now Prime Minister Modi will fix the problem, but it’s not up to us to tell him to do it because ultimately we’re not going to fund him doing it. The agreement was that America and Japan and Australia and China and Europe would fund India to clean up the mess we made as collectively the developed world, we’ve reneged on that promise.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

But the world’s got the impression that India is industrialising, electrifying by building coal-fired power from one end of the subcontinent to the other.

Tim Buckley:

That was certainly 100% correct a decade ago. In 2010, India had formal plans in process to build 600 gigawatts of coal fired power plants. Now that is 10 times the size of the Australian electricity market. And at the time India was a relative global minnow. They’ve subsequently grown by 6.5%, 7% GDP growth per annum for a decade. Electricity demand has grown by 6% annually for a decade. And they’re replicating the Chinese miracle if you like, but of those 600 gigawatts of proposed coal fired power plants, 85% have been canceled. If that had not happened, Paris would be impossible.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

And so that came under the Modi government?

Tim Buckley:

Yes.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

And it came on economic or environmental grounds?

Tim Buckley:

100% economic grounds. As we just talked about, the air pollution issue is now an issue. But seven years ago, when Prime Minister Modi was elected, they are a developing country. They couldn’t afford to deal with the air pollution. They wanted to actually grow their economy.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

This is crucial. If India decided we’ve got to plan for building this coal-fired power plant, we’re going to junk that plan, where’s the robust – to use the Australian adjective that keeps being applied here – reliable, all purpose ,day and night source of power to substitute for the coal.

Tim Buckley:

It’s a very Australian question. We’ve had a decade now of talking about the critical importance of reliability, the critical importance of base load power. Now, in my view, and we’ve written op-eds about this, base load power is a concept from last century. We need to modernise our electricity grid to deal with the current century, not last century’s problem. The technology landscape has changed phenomenally. So the idea that you’re going to run a nuclear power plant 90% of the time or a coal fired power plant 80% of the time, well, there’s almost no country in the world that’s doing that today.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Haven’t they all got the challenge of those big demands for power that come when people get home from work, or when people get up in the morning, isn’t that base load that you can’t get we’re told from solar or wind?

Tim Buckley:

You’ve absolutely defined the problem. And then you’ve articulated that coal base load is the answer. What you actually need is very fast ramping, flexible, peaking power generation. The last thing you want is an inflexible 24/7 base load power when demand is going to do that at six o’clock at night, which it will very reliably. We know demand is going to go up just as the sun sets. And so solar is absolutely useless at providing the needs of people getting home from work for the six to eight o’clock hour timeframe.

Tim Buckley:

But so is coal because coal has to be running in the middle of the day when it’s sunny. And so when you have a huge amount of very, very cheap solar power, your coal fired power plant is actually better off turned off. It can’t turn on and ramp up in time for the six o’clock demand. You actually need a peaking power plant. Now that changes everything. So the idea of nuclear and coal is actually obsolete as a base load. I think the whole concept of base load power is obsolete. What we need is flexible, on demand, fast ramping power generation that actually meets the needs of the consumer rather than meets the needs of the coal company.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Well Tim, you’ve won the argument if you can demonstrate that India faced this very challenge and opted to go for renewables and to cancel the earlier commitments for coal fired power plants.

Tim Buckley:

Let me give you an economic reason for why Prime Minister Modi is 100% wedded to this plan. The power price for solar is two and a half to three rupees a kilowatt hour. So in US dollar terms, that’s $35 to $40 US dollars a megawatt hour. A coal fired power plant that is domestic and mine-mouth can deliver power at three and a half rupees. So $50 US dollars, 20% more expensive. If it’s import or if it’s non mine-mouth, you’re talking about five rupees. It’s almost double the price of solar and wind. Now that economics Prime Minister Modi absolutely understands. Now what he also understands is energy security. You’ve run New South Wales, you know the importance of energy security. Australia, I said a decade ago, Australia would never have an energy security problem. We are blessed with the best coal, gas, uranium, wind, solar, hydro in the world, but we’re almost the only country that has that blessing.

Tim Buckley:

And if you think about India or China, they are the biggest energy importers in the world alongside Korea and Japan. So energy security is absolutely at the forefront of the Prime Minister’s mind. Now India imports quarter of a trillion dollars a year of fossil fuels. So when we talk about economics, there’s the straight economic argument. Solar and wind is now 20% to 50% cheaper than domestic coal power, half the price of imported coal fire power. It wins the economic argument. It also delivers on the energy security argument because energy security is about relying on domestic resources. India has huge water, hydro, wind, solar and coal assets.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

And what sort of solar are they going to be relying on? And what’s their commitment to batteries, which is in Australian terms, the indispensable extra element to render South Australia reliable, for example. What’s the equivalent in India?

Tim Buckley:

Looking at the reliability argument, India’s got one huge advantage over Australia. 1.3 billion people connected by one grid. Fortunately for India and for Prime Minister Modi and his renewable energy ambitions, he inherited an electricity grid that had actually been unified in the previous decade. It used to be seven different regional areas, it became five, became three, then became one. The International Energy Agency drew my attention is they have actually spent $10 or $20 billion a year building out their grid up until this decade. So therefore when Prime Minister Modi comes in and says, “We’re going to build 450 gigawatts of renewables in the coming decade”, he’s actually got a grid that can handle it. And that was probably best proven in April when Prime Minister Modi announced a national lockdown and they locked it down. Electricity demand dropped 28% in the month of April.

Tim Buckley:

And after nine days of national lockdown, Prime Minister Modi in a show of national unity, he said “At nine o’clock at night, let’s have a nine minute silence and sing the national anthem at night. But before you do, please turn off every electronic item so that there is no light in your house, no TV, no computers, no light.” They did it. Now that created a huge stress on the grid. So what you had was every light and every TV and virtually every computer in the country got turned off in the 10 minutes up until nine o’clock at night, and then 10 minutes later, they all turned back on.

Tim Buckley:

That’s a grid operator’s worst nightmare. It’s an unprecedented event globally. India’s grid operator managed to reduce demand by 32,000 megawatts in a 10 minute interval, nine minutes later, they then had to ramp electricity supply up 32,000 megawatts in literally another 10 minutes. So it’s the biggest demand spike in world history probably, I might be taking a bit of license, but I doubt anyone could prove that statement wrong. Over a 30 minute period, we went down flat and then back up and the grid didn’t fall over. And they were only given a week’s notice.

Tim Buckley:

So they called on every hydro electricity asset they had. They called on their coal, flexible coal. They called on their gas. They called on their batteries. They called on everything and they managed to keep the grid stable because the problem is we saw in South Australia, the federal minister has blamed wind as being South Australia’s problem. It caused a blackout. Now it was wind. It was actually a one in 100 year extreme weather event that knocked the grid over. It knocked 20 pylons over so the wind knocked the grid over. It took weeks for the South Australian grid to recover from that. A grid can’t go black and then restart. India avoided going black. They had no blackouts. They had no consequences, which means their grid is phenomenally robust. And they have that flexible power, capacity and mindset. And it’s very much about mindset. It’s about, we don’t do base load power. We actually have variable power production to meet variable power demand.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

That’s a very powerful case story because people who are resisting climate action will say, “We could do this, but what difference would it make if Australia did all the right things? Because India’s off there, building all this coal-fired power.” I think you need to speak up on that Indian case study because I doubt if there are any participants in this debate in Australia who would be aware that India, this huge story of India canceling commitment to build coal fired power plants.

Tim Buckley:

Yeah, literally canceling 85% of plans to build the second biggest coal fired power plant build out in world history. And it actually never happened. And the coal industry went from saying “China’s going to be the savior of the coal industry for the world.” And then China peaked in coal in 2013. “Oh, India is going to be the great white elephant of the coal industry.” And that didn’t happen. Now they’re saying it’s going to be, Asia is going to be the savior of the Australian coal industry because we are the world’s biggest exporter of coal. It’s critical for our industry. Our coal miners, our coal mining companies should I say, the coal miners are going to get it in the neck. They’re just going to be automated out of existence regardless. The product will cease to be used as well.

Tim Buckley:

I think you’re right that what India is doing, and I’ve certainly devoted my energy career to studying India, because I noticed what India was doing was effectively replicating the amazing transformation that China has gone through in the last decade to become the world leader in energy.

Tim Buckley:

Let’s go through it.

Tim Buckley:

China is the world’s biggest builder of hydro, they’ve dammed every river in their own country. Now they’re damming all the rivers around the world. They’re the biggest builder of hydro. They have 50% global market share. They’re the only country other than Russia that is still building nuclear anywhere in the world. Everyone would go “What about Westinghouse?” Well, Westinghouse went bankrupt. Westinghouse got bailed out by Toshiba of Japan. And then Toshiba-

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

The nuclear relations died in the United States.

Tim Buckley:

It died in Europe as well. And so that’s why it will never happen. It’s a red herring in the Australian debate. It’s just never going to happen. But China is also the world’s biggest builder of electric vehicles. A stunning figure that I got from Bloomberg New Energy Finance this week is that China is building and selling 18 million electric scooters every year. In fact, there is no internal combustion engine motorbike in China anymore. That’s how quickly they’re moving and meanwhile we’re debating, “Oh, should we do electric vehicles at some point in the coming decades?” Well, there’s no debate in China, they’ve already made the decision a decade ago. They are the world’s biggest producer of electric vehicles. They’re the world’s biggest producer of batteries. They’re the world’s biggest, rare earth processor. They’re the biggest miner of lithium-ion in the world.

Tim Buckley:

So we debate Australia is blessed with natural resources. We are totally blessed, but while we allow Chinese investment, they’ve come in and bought all of our lithium-ion deposits and they bought all of our rare earth deposits and they take all the product back to China and process it up there. So take your hat off to their strategic insights. They’re very, very clever thinkers. They’re very strategic thinkers. You know that. But sorry, that’s a bit of a ramble about China. But what I got really impressed with, I was studying China and then all of a sudden I watched Modi come along and he started replicating what China’s doing and he’s replicating it but with one key point of difference. The price of solar has dropped by 90% since China first embarked on this program of reform of energy disruption.

Tim Buckley:

So Prime Minister Modi has come along, he’s said, “Well, this is actually the economically sensible thing.” And let me give you one number. People go, “Oh, solar’s had its heyday. It’s now reached commercial viability.” It does not stop. Solar prices, the solar module price, has dropped 20% in the last 12 months. So you might be aware that the solar price has come down 10% annually for a decade. Well, solar module prices are down 20% in the last 12 months. That is a game changer because the price of solar is going to go to virtually zero. So the idea you’re going to run a base load coal fired power plant against a competitor that has a zero marginal cost and virtually zero full cost. You cannot compete with it. It’s an unfair fight. And that’s what BlackRock’s finally understood. BlackRock understands that this fight is so unfair, it’s obvious it’s terminal for thermal coal.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Tim, that’s been a terrific bit of analysis. Thank you very much. I appreciate your insight into India and to China as well. And it’s something you don’t read about, something you just don’t read about in the Australian press.

Tim Buckley:

I would say Murdoch is a key problem here. And he’s seen the consequences of that with the layoffs that his company is now incurring because they have dominated the debate in the mainstream media and for whatever reason, I see the Murdoch press has been climate deniers. And so if you look about it in the Australian context, there is also incumbency as a huge, powerful industry. And if you think about the incumbent issues of the coal industry, the coking coal industry, we’re the world’s biggest export of coking coal, we’re the world’s second biggest exporter of thermal coal, we’re the world’s biggest exporter of gas, we export $120 billion a year as a nation of fossil fuels. Incumbency says we will be a global laggard because that industry is not going to go away quietly. They’re not just going to roll over and let the world move and deliver on Paris and destroy their core business. They will fight the whole way, delay, delay, delay. Now that’s their mentality.

Tim Buckley:

But at the end of the day that’s why I look at a country like India who’s the recipient of all of their exports. And China and India and Japan don’t want to be beholden on Australian fossil fuel imports for the next 50 years. The Paris agreement says they can’t be, but for energy security reasons they don’t want to. And now economics says they don’t want to either. So why would they do it? They’re not going to do it out of friendship for Australia. They’re going to do what is in their own national interest for economic reasons, for environmental reasons and for energy security reasons, and to grab the investment and technology and employment opportunities that brings.

Tim Buckley:

So Prime Minister Modi, he talks about electrification all the time. He talks about 450 gigawatts of renewables by 2030. And he also talks about making India. He has 20 million young Indians entering the workforce every year. If he does not grow the economy dramatically every year, he won’t be in office because he will have 20 million unemployed Indians every year, demanding jobs. So he’s got to grow the economy. He’s got to drive manufacturing, he’s got to drive the economic growth there. And that’s part of why I say the Delhi pollution problem is really problematic, but dealing with 20 million new jobs every year is a base requirement. That’s Modi’s number one objective.

Professor the Hon. Bob Carr:

Tim Buckley. Thank you very much.

Tim Buckley:

Thank you.

Erika Wagner:

That was Tim Buckley, the Director of Energy Finance Studies Australasia at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, speaking to Bob Carr on the 28th of May this year. Next time on UTS 4 Climate. We’re going to hear from Professor Tim Flannery, a leading voice in Australia’s climate conversation. After years of writing about Australia’s lack of action on climate, he’s been thinking about our successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He says we need the same urgent response to save our planet.

Professor Tim Flannery:

We’re out of time. If you think about our response to the pandemic, the number of victims was doubling every four days. We didn’t have more than a week before we really needed to act. With climate change, we’re now in a position where on the balance of probabilities we’re committed to between 1.5 and two degrees of warming. We need to act in a threefold way. We need to cut those emissions.

Erika Wagner:

That’s next time on UTS 4 Climate. I’m Erika Wagner. Thanks for listening. To continue the discussion about climate change and to see some of the inspiring projects UTS researchers are working on. Go to the UTS for Climate website, just head to uts4climate.uts.edu.au.

Male Voice Over:

UTS for climate was created in response to the 2019 student strike for climate. It is a statement of the university’s commitment to addressing the global problem of climate change through our research, our curriculum and operations. The UTS 4 Climate podcast is made by Impact Studios at the University of Technology Sydney in collaboration with the Institute for Sustainable Futures. At Impact Studios, we combine academic research with audio storytelling for real world impact. The production team live on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, whose lands were never ceded.