Prof Sir David King: 0:03

We need to move frankly, very, very quickly. I'm saying what we humanity do over the next five years, will determine the future of humanity for the next milennium.

Tom Raftery: 0:18

Good morning, good afternoon or good evening wherever you are in the world. This is the climate 21 podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices and climate emissions reductions. And I'm your host, global Vice President for SAP. Tom Raftery. Climate 21 is the name of an initiative by SAP to allow our customers calculate, report and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In this climate 21 podcast, I will showcase best practices and thought leadership by SAP, by our customers by our partners on by our competitors if their game in climate emissions reductions. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the climate 21 podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the podcast today I have my special guest. He's asked me to call him, Dave, but I'll let you introduce themselves. Dave, do you want introduce yourself?

Prof Sir David King: 1:18

Yes, I'm very happy to do that. And delighted to be talking to you, Tom. I, my official title is Professor Sir David King, I was Chief Scientific adviser to Tony Blair. And after that, moved into the foreign office where I lead on the climate negotiations for the Foreign Secretary. And before all of that, I was head of the chemistry department at Cambridge University.

Tom Raftery: 1:43

Okay, and now you are.

Prof Sir David King: 1:45

And now I am the founder and chair of the Center for climate repair at my old University, Cambridge. Okay, super.

Tom Raftery: 1:55

So before we get into the center for climate repair, obviously climate is something that you have been working on for many years now. Why? Why is climate important to you?

Prof Sir David King: 2:09

Well, I think quite simply, there is no more bigger challenge to humanity than climate change. And I'm saying, since really, our civilization began many 1000s of years ago, this is the single biggest challenge to that civilization,

Tom Raftery: 2:30

and why so what makes it such a big threat?

Prof Sir David King: 2:33

Basically, if we go, just to mid century, because we have not been doing the things we should have been doing, we can see that there will be something like 200 to 300 million climate refugees from South East Asia alone. So in other words, the the latest carefully calculated prediction on where we will be by mid century, 30 years time is that 90% of the landmass of Vietnam will be underwater, at least once a year, due to rising sea levels, and the greater intensity of hurricanes in that area, both due to climate change. Hurricanes pick up their intensity from the surface ocean, and the ocean behind the hurricane is much colder. So it's taking that energy up into the Hurricanes vortex, and the intensity of hurricanes. And even the number of Americans in Southeast Asia is far far greater than ever recorded by humanity before. So what we're seeing is hajiman City, virtually underwater. We're seeing today that this January, the city of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia was underwater. Calcutta has been underwater a few times already. And in 30 years time, neither of those two cities will be livable as cities. And we all hear about Bangladesh, two thirds of the landmass of Bangladesh will not be livable by just 30 years time. Now all of this is part and parcel of rising sea levels, rising temperatures, heat stress, in many parts of the world will be devastating. It'll be devastating for those parts of the world, which where people don't have access to air conditioning. And frankly, if the temperatures at 4344 degrees centigrade for three to four days on the trot and you don't have access to air conditioning and you may be sitting in the shade you will die. Miso, heat stress major me Did you challenge? Well, let me just go back to Vietnam, the Mekong Delta. And essentially, Vietnam is this Mekong Delta, it's been pushed out into the sea over the last million years of service. It's very close to sea level. But it's also one of the world's biggest rice producing area areas. In that Mekong Delta, we have a vast array of rice paddy fields. Similarly, Indonesia, and both of these countries, their paddy fields are very close to sea level, once they sell a native, they're not productive. rice production in that area of the world, including southeast China, which will also be frequently flooded, rice production in that area of the world will collapse. And so we're looking at a situation where not only will we have 200 to 300 million refugees, but we're also looking at massive food shortages. And I think just taking that one example, 30 years time, if we were to extrapolate forward to 200 years time, is devastating, it really is devastating. In other words, rising temperatures will simply push us right over the hill in terms of a civilization. And frankly, 200 years isn't a long time in human history. So this is the biggest challenge civilization has ever had to face up to. We picked up on it in 1992. And we began the United Nations led discussions twice a year, the cop meetings have taken place since then, we've had one agreement, 197 nations in Paris agreed on action to keep the temperature rise to less than 1.5 degrees centigrade, if at all possible above the pre industrial level. I'm afraid our record on managing this has been very bad even since 2015, six years ago, the greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere have just kept on rising. So we have a challenge. But I don't believe we, we I believe we can manage the challenge. But we I mean, all of us are responsible for acting in response to them.

Tom Raftery: 7:26

Okay, and is that what the Center for climate repair in Cambridge is about them?

Prof Sir David King: 7:32

Absolutely. So, in essence, I left the Foreign Office in 2017, to come back to Cambridge to set up the center. Because what I wanted to do was use the pulling power, frankly, of the University of Cambridge, to pull the best minds in here from around the world. To discuss how we can meet these challenges. what I've got is four concepts that we have to be committed to first is deep and rapid emissions reduction. If we don't end the fossil fuel era, if we don't end the business of taking forests out tropical forests out around the world, if we don't end all of those things, frankly, we have cooked so much first, even rapid emissions reduction. And so working on all of the post fossil fuel technologies, and then working with businesses to see that we get rolled out, and there hasn't been a lot of success down that area. That second, greenhouse gas removal at scale. So let me say something about greenhouse gases. We all know that greenhouse gases keep the Earth's temperature about 30 degrees centigrade warmer than the moon's temperature, Moon and the Earth the same distance from the Sun that warms both of us. But we've got an atmosphere. And the atmosphere acts as a kind of blanket over the earth and keeps us warmer. But actually the only part of that atmosphere that acts as a blanket is the minority gases, carbon dioxide, and methane for example. nitrogen and oxygen most of the atmosphere does not capture any radiated energy from the surface. greenhouse gases in the pre industrial era were about 270 parts per million to 300 parts per million. And today, if we count in as we must do methane and other greenhouse gases, we are at 508 parts per million. We pushed it up from 270 to 300 to 508. I don't think there's a climate scientist would say 508 we can manage that. It's already too much. And so this second objective is to work globally, to see that we bring greenhouse gas levels down from 580 to 350 parts per million. I don't think we can do that before the end of the century. So it's going to be a slow process. We'll get there by the end of the century, if we can remove about 14 billion tons of greenhouse gases a year, think we're working on enough different technologies that I can honestly say, I know that we can do it, but we need to check that each of these mechanisms of doing it is is managing greenhouse gas levels need to be brought down to 350 parts per million or less by the end of the century. But there are things already happening. So for example, the Arctic region of the world is now at a crisis point. It's past a crisis point, that Arctic ice that was covering most of the Arctic Sea, over 1000s of years has been thinning and thinning and coming down until today, during the Arctic summer, about half of the Arctic Sea is exposed to sunlight that was previously covered with ice. Ice reflects the sun away, the blue sea absorbs the sunshine. And so the Arctic Circle region as a whole, this enormous region is now heating up at about three to three and a half times the rate of the rest of the planet. So we are ready last year at three and a half degrees centigrade above the pre industrial level in the Arctic Circle region. And what this means is because Greenland sits in the Arctic sea now during that out peak summer, Greenland is now beginning to lose its life more and more rapidly with time. And many reasons for this one is that the the ice is becoming blackened. As the ice on Greenland melts the accumulated dust from 1000s of years before it remains in the surface. The ice is black, and therefore it absorbs more sunlight. And so why is this a worry when all the Greenland ice has melted, the sea levels will rise by seven and a half meters globally. And that means what? Let me translate that into feet, that's 24 feet. And that's a global average sea level rise. Now, of course, that would make the map of the world look very different in all of our major cities sitting on your coastlines would no longer be by. But well before that, even at one or two meters sea level rise, which was what I was talking about. By mid century, we will see that we have massive challenges, cities sitting on coastlines. They didn't mention Calcutta, I didn't mention Mumbai, these cities in India sitting right by the coastline will no longer be livable. I'm talking about cities with 12 to 20 million people. And this is just by mid century, by the end of the century, we may well see sea levels rising by two to three meters and maybe some people say four meters. And cities like New York blog viously be massively challenged. So I think the this this third aspect, remove greenhouse gases at scale. It's not a pipe dream, we have to do it. The next aspect of the of the challenge is what what do we do about the ice melting in the Arctic Circle region? And the answer has to be we have to rephrase. And the question then is how would you said about refreezing the Arctic Circle region. And I was at a meeting with President grimson from from Iceland last week. And he rightly was saying, we have to as a global community by time by refreezing the Arctic Circle region. And we are working on that. We are we have people here people in Stanford working on different techniques to manage the Arctic Circle rephrasing I have to say to you, Tom, that we prefer techniques that mimic nature, and we massively prefer techniques that will return our bio systems and our ecosystems to their former state. So we're focusing on getting not just the climate change under control, but the natural world into a better state as we move forward. Now, I promised four different commitments. And the fourth commitment is that we need rapid, flexible movement of nations to drive all this through forward. We need companies, we need philanthropists, we need people to come together and work on this together so that we can manage the problem. And so here in Cambridge, we are already pulling together, the scientists, the engineers, the economists, the social scientists, but also working with politicians working globally, with the communities that can begin to manage this problem. But we need to move frankly, very, very quickly. I'm saying what we humanity do over the next five years, will determine the future of humanity for the next millennium? Well,

Tom Raftery: 15:56

a couple of questions, I guess, I could first, you mentioned getting the concentration of co2 in the atmosphere from the above 500, that it's now down to 350. By the end of this century. I'm just wondering why 350? And why not aim for the original 270? Is it just that it can't be done in the time? And ultimately, we should go back to 270? Or have we given up on 270? altogether? Or is there not a requirement to ever get to 270? Or what what's the thinking there?

Prof Sir David King: 16:30

That's a very, very good question. Why do we focus on 350? That is a number that James Hansen from Columbia University and previously at NASA, the icon of climate scientists has has figured, is a number that if we could get there, we can manage our future going forward in time. But let me say you said carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide levels today are 415 parts per million, the biggest rise in greenhouse gases today, although the rise in carbon dioxide is high annually, the biggest rise is actually in methane levels in terms of its impact on climate change. And methane comes from fugitive methane emitted emitted from gas oil and coal recovery. But it also comes from farming. And when we have livestock when we have rice production, these are big methane producers. And it comes from the Arctic region, where a lot of methane is trapped is put in the permafrost regions of northern Canada and northern Russia, etc. And so we know that potentially there's enough methane trapped in that permafrost region to drive temperatures up by 2025 degrees centigrade. Now, that is something we really have to avoid. And there's another reason for refreezing the Arctic 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide plus all the other greenhouse gases, I'm saying co2 equivalent is a very good objective. If we could get it down to 270 parts per million, I wouldn't stop they would keep going. But we are setting a minimal objective at 350 parts per million.

Tom Raftery: 18:24

Okay. Okay, super. Now, you mentioned then that the aim is to reduce our suck out of the atmosphere 40 billion tonnes of climate emissions a year. And that's a number that I think people would have a very difficult time getting their heads around. So the way I try and envisage this as I think of a ton as being roughly the size of a small car, a Mini Cooper, for example, is roughly a ton in weight. And then I think of, well, what's the size of 100? minis? What's the size of 1000 10,000? A million 1,000,000,040 billion a year? I mean, where do we put 40 billion? Obviously, not mini Coopers? Where do we put 40 billion tons of climate emissions a year and make sure that they stay there?

Prof Sir David King: 19:30

Yes, an exceptionally important question you're asking let me just rephrase the 30 to 40 billion a year to remove in terms of the amount of emissions that we're adding to the atmosphere today. We are adding in five added methane as before, about 50 to 55 billion tons of greenhouse gases a year. So we humanity are doing this. We're perfectly capable of putting it up there. Now we have to learn to take it out. Roughly that rake, if we could do 50 billion tonnes a year, that would be marvelous. But let me just say, this isn't so we can go on emitting, we have to reduce our emissions to zero and then chartering the absolute level of greenhouse gases down. And one of the answers that we're looking at very, very carefully, is, how do we manage this by attempting also to, to return the oceans to the state, they were in three or 400 years ago, when the oceans were teeming with fish when the oceans were full of whales. In fact, Blue Whales always commented on by the sailors of previous times. Because basically, once we can get the whale population up again, the the whales do something really wonderful. The whales can spend a lot of time down in the deep water down near the ocean crust near the ocean floor. And they they feed on the material down there, but they come up to the surface to poop. And it's this process that brings the fertility up to the surface region of the oceans. And once you do that, you create large green areas in the ocean. And these green areas contain a large amount of phytoplankton and phytoplankton is the initial foodstuff for fish larvae when they catch when they hatch from eggs. The average female fish lays about 100,000 eggs a year. And what this means is the oceans full of fish eggs. And wherever you create a green area like this, you find within a few months, that whole area is a teeming ocean forest with a full biodiverse system, many, many different kinds of fish, and the blue whales come along and with a blue whale, one mouse for you might catch a million fish. And one of these areas, maybe 50,000 square kilometres in size, would carry billions of fish. And that that will survive for quite a long time several years. Now, what I want to do is see if we can reproduce this natural process across the ocean surface and maybe two to 3% of the ocean, the deep ocean surface every year, I think we could return the fish stock to the ocean to the state they used to be in. And we would also capture a vast amount of greenhouse gases through this green material, but also through the the mash of the the fish stocks that we're adding to the ocean. Now, if you think of what the forests on land have been taking up in terms of greenhouse gases, it's it's an enormous tonnage every year taken up by the tropical forests of the world and other forests. And so this is the answer to the question we add mass into the oceans, we want to see and this is the experiments I'm pushing to get done around the world, we want to see that there's no negative outcomes of doing this, that we don't D oxygenate the ocean water because the fish will go belly up. If we do that, we want to see that we do this safely, and that we managed to return our oceans to their original living condition. If we look at how this also happens, naturally, nevermind the blue whales. When the wind blows over the Sahara Desert, it picks up a dust storm and the dust storm is consists of dust particles that are in fact desert dust. These are very small particles, that's an important part of it. And they contain iron, which is why desert sand is a really yellow color. And when the wind blows over the Atlantic and then dies down, the ocean is peppered with these small dust particles, which sit on the surface of the ocean, the surface tension keeps them there. And in sunlight, within a month, that whole area is green and a typical area might be between 50,000 and 100,000 square kilometres. And then we see within a year, that place is teeming with every big fish because they come in to eat the little fish etc. So it is a natural process. And we've got to see whether we can manage to roll this out. at scale, if we could, it is possible that is one technique could enable us to capture 20 to 30, maybe even more billion tons of greenhouse gases a year. But the final question is going to be and how does it get sequestered? How is it captured permanently. And the work that we will do is to see that it adds to the ocean crust of the floor of the ocean. Because that is how the ocean crust originally was formed as, as any living matter dies and falls through the ocean, it can pick up the minerals from the ocean that turn it into very stable carbonates. And that is what the ocean crust contains.

Tom Raftery: 25:51

Okay. So how do we do that? I mean, I know technically, I have a few ideas, technically and how we could do that. But how do we finance doing that? Well,

Prof Sir David King: 26:05

it is an interesting aspect of this one, because we to eat fish. And so if we can control the fisheries of the world, over the deep ocean surface, in such a way that we manage the level of fishing, we can also charge for the for the fish catch that goes in for human consumption. So in this way, it would be a more than self financing process, I think there's even a small profit to be made from this. And it becomes a an ocean place where we're returning the ocean to its original state and at the same time, returning it as a resource for human beings. Okay,

Tom Raftery: 26:56

it has proven incredibly difficult over the last number of decades, though, to stop overfishing, as we've seen,

Prof Sir David King: 27:02

you're quite right. And I think I mean, the British government has, I think of more marine protection areas than any other country in the world, maybe the United States is up there. But the reason is, because as I'm sure you know, we used to have colonies and an empire. Many of these small islands, like santolina have very small populations, and we keep them alive. And so we can be clear big marine protection areas around the small islands in the deep oceans. And so our MPa is a very extensive, and we have banned fishing from most of them, and then fishing on a small scale to keep the islanders going. But the problem is policing. And with satellites, we can pick up fishing vessels that seem to be stationary in these areas, and then we follow those vessels and try to capture them. But this isn't easy. So policing is a problem. And the whole process would need to see that we we manage the business of policing the global ocean system as well. Now all of this requires global agreements around the world. And this, this is is quite challenging. My feeling is that willing nations will join in, in meeting these demands, because we're all in this and we all benefit. I created something I was the instigator of something called Mission Innovation, which is a group of nations that we call together to create all of the technologies in the post fossil fuel era. This was initiated on the first day of the COC meeting in 2015. Heads of governments were invited to stand underneath the banner saying Mission Innovation, we had 23 heads of governments standing under that banner. And those 23 heads of government out of 197 nations in the world sound like a small number, but they represent 80% of global GDP. So that team that is now spending $23 billion a year plus on these developing these new technologies, that's public money going into universities and so on around the world is about to expand that to 40 billion plus by 2025. These willing nations seeing that they can act will take the rest of the world with them. I think that's an important lesson. Okay.

Tom Raftery: 29:49

The the the audience of this podcast are typically people who are I think, because it's very hard to get demographics for podcasts, but I want to think it's people Who are in business? And, you know, from the last few podcasts on this podcast, we can see that the world is going to have to very quickly move away from emissions, climate emissions, and into a post carbon world. You know, if not, it's game over in a few short decades. You know, with that in mind, in terms of enterprises and businesses is there. It's obviously this is obviously something that should be at the front of their minds as they plan forward the next four or 510 years that we are moving away from fossil fuels and into a post carbon world. What kind of advice would you give organizations as they look forward, given that we are entering this post carbon world,

Prof Sir David King: 30:49

the first bit of advice, which is the advice that the former governor of the Bank of England was giving this as Mark Carney, the Canadian, yeah, he gave the the advice to the banks in the City of London saying any investment you make into the fossil fuel industry, and all of its relations will not be fit for purpose in the 21st century. And so these will be stranded assets, you will not get a return on those investments, because they really cannot exist. Once everyone understands the direction of travel of the world today. Mark Carney was very clear. And I would say very blunt in his advice on this and talking to financial leaders in the City of London, I do find that that message is getting through. So if you want to fund an oil company, for example, make sure that what you're funding is not further oil discovery, not further oil recovery or gas recovery, but the alternative energy systems that these companies need to switch over to if those companies wish to survive, as we move forward through the coming decades. So the most important thing is look at the financial community and methodology and thinking around investment in investment into a viable future is of course, the only sensible investment to make. And fossil fuel futures are non viable. We are phasing in the current cars, automobiles, road road vehicles out of existence, because they're based on the use of fossil fuels to keep them going. And we're phasing in rapidly here in England electric vehicles, and of course, this is happening around the world, then the new world is already emerging very, very rapidly. And by the way, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a week ago that we will be reducing our emissions by 78% by 2038. That was the guess we have a climate change committee of Parliament that has been set up in 2008 by an all party agreement, and that committees sets targets for carbon emissions every year going forward. And so all he's done is to take out is very, very important figure, we have already reduced our emissions by 50% since 1990. And this country which I think we would all say started the Industrial Revolution. And it was all based on coal burning, that this country no longer is burning coal to make electricity. So we we have moved on from that. What's the most successful way in which we are producing electricity in Britain, believe it or not, it's offshore wind, but everyone saw their offshore wind is going to be so much more expensive than any other form of electricity production. When you go offshore, you can put wind turbine blades on the current length of the blades is 110 meters so long, that these wind turbines are extremely efficient at producing electricity. So this great farm of wind turbines we have in the North Sea today is producing nearly 50% of our electricity. And that has come up from virtually nothing in the year 2000. But with a very determined effort by one government after the other to get to our commitment to reduce emissions to net zero by 2018. 50. So I think all of these things can be done, they can be done with sensible planning sensible investments. And everything has to be speeded up. Because I'm afraid the rate of travel of greenhouse gas emissions around the world is is beyond belief at the moment. Now, of course, there's something very good underlying, which is the emergence of a global middle class, which never existed before. In the year 2000, we had just over a billion people who I would describe as middle class that is spending between 10 and $100 a day. And today were well on the way to three and a half billion. So the rapidly emerging economies of bringing forward this big new global middle class, but they're consuming electricity enormously, and they're consuming meat. And so all of these products require energy or production of methane. And so what we see is the negative side of this rapid emergence, China is now committed to net zero emissions before 2016. And that I am in touch with people on their planning committee, I know that this is a reality. But of course, we know that India just over the border is not committed to that at all. And India is still burning coal, at a very rapid rate. So we've got a big global problem on our hands, in persuading these countries to head towards net zero emissions, let alone taking out greenhouse gases.

Tom Raftery: 36:49

Yep. But I think the top line here is that if you are in business, if you are in industry of any kind, you need to be thinking in terms of the world is moving this direction, and have I want to stay in business, I need to be ahead of that curve, or at the top of that curve to make sure people are going to want to the planet has to decarbonize, so if I can help I can make money by doing this.

Prof Sir David King: 37:19

Yes. So let me give you examples of two Dutch companies. I'm stepping out of Britain, so I can use another country as an exemplar. The first is Unilever. And the second is a company called DSM. The second company DSM used to stand for Dutch state minds. Okay, but it's now the probably the most sustainable company in our of its kind in the world, if there used to be it turned into a chemical company. And today, it's a company aiming to be net zero emissions itself within a few years. What they've done is turn themselves around to meet demands, for example, they provide they're a b2b company. They provide all the vitamins that go into your cornflakes every morning, right. So you open a packet of Kellogg's, the only name on the on the cover and inside a DSM Bittman. I've talked to them about advertising that they should put inside the DSM,

Tom Raftery: 38:33

like Intel Inside on the computers.

Prof Sir David King: 38:36

But the point about DSM and Unilever is both of these companies have turned their profits up. very significantly, the value of the two companies on the stock market also has gone up very significantly. And I think this is young people saying these companies are going in the right direction. But the other thing is, the CEOs of both those companies will tell you the number of people taking time off because they're ill has been reduced massively. The number of applications per job vacancy has gone up massively. So what they see is that the employee satisfaction is has gone up because the employees come into work, saying, we're doing something good, but what DSM describes itself as the three p company people, profit planet. And absolutely, you know, this, this gets to every employee, they're really proud of the

Tom Raftery: 39:39

department so far. We're coming to the end of the podcast now.

Unknown: 39:44

Dave,

Tom Raftery: 39:45

are you optimistic for our future,

Prof Sir David King: 39:47

as he one has to be optimistic, Tom? I could very easily throw in the towel. You know, I have an age where I could retire but I can tell you I don't think I've ever been as busy as I And the reason is because the challenge is now far greater than it was when I got into this 20 plus years ago. It's far greater now. And it doesn't mean that we should give up. I think there is a clear path into the future. And that path is frustratingly difficult to follow, because there's so many people who, for whatever reason, want to block the pathway. But frankly, it only gets worse and worse, if we go down that route. No, we must never give up. That's that what do I say to my grandchildren? Now true?

Tom Raftery: 40:42

No, I, I'm a glass half full person. And I always say that, you know, it's only through, it might be it naive optimism. But as long as you as long as you're optimistic, and you think there is a way forward, that's the only way forward. Is there? Like I say, we're coming to the end of the podcast. Now. Dave, is there any question I have not asked you that you wish I had, or any topic, we've not touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of trauma? I

Prof Sir David King: 41:07

think we've covered the ground. And I have to thank you for your very perceptive questions, because you have allowed me to explain quite a bit at a level that that I don't often get the chance to do. So thank you very much. No, no, no, no, no, no,

Tom Raftery: 41:23

no, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and in helping to educate the audience and talk about this topic that is so incredibly important. If people want to know more about yourself, or about the Center for climate repair, or any of the topics we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Prof Sir David King: 41:44

So since center for climate group period, Cambridge is his title. And think you will find that you get website quite quickly.

Tom Raftery: 41:56

I put a link in the show notes. Okay, Dave, thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. It's been outstanding.

Prof Sir David King: 42:02

And Tom, thanks for everything you're doing.

Tom Raftery: 42:06

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks, everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about climate 21, feel free to drop me an email to Tom raftery@sap.com or connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you'd like to show please don't forget to subscribe to it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.