YouSaid · the spoken record

Arthur Snell

lines on the record: 32
first: 2026-04-14
most recent: 2026-04-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“If there had been this kind of global Kumbaya moment, if I can use that phrase, not to be cynical, but we are still going to get. Yes, the failure of the so-called rules-based international system is something we're witnessing. And there's no point denying that that's happening. But out of that failure, there are signs of positivity as countries start to work together in the sort of like-minded groupings. And that still gives us some hope for the future.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“powerful countries the US, China and so on agreeing a target towards net zero and then taking concerted action and of course sadly we see in some cases the absolute opposite we see a sort of almost quixotic obsession with fossil fuels in North America but having said all of that I think because of the failings and the frustrations with the COP process what you're seeing is smaller groupings of countries starting to work together in a higher ambition manner now one might say well that's not that's not good enough we need the whole world to do this I agree it would be better if the whole world were doing this but if for example the EU makes serious progress if for example China drives its economy to become the world leader in electrification, what ends up happening is perhaps not as good as it would have been.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's a great question, and obviously, you know, having been a diplomat, a foreign policy official, I've seen this stuff up close. And I think... There was a time in a post-war but also post-Cold War moment of perhaps sort of end of history 1990s where we did believe that concerted global action would be the way that these major existential crises were tackled. And of course there is the COP conference of parties process which is ongoing which does effectively attempt to do that with the climate. But it's getting harder and harder and people are rightly becoming cynical about it. However, and I think this is where I think that the answer to your question but also the hope for the future is it's twofold. One is that no, what we're not actually likely to do, it's not going to happen as far as I can see is witness the countries of the world coming together in a proper kind of United Nations fashion perhaps led by the most”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“CO2 emitter. So we may be at a historical turning point, but of course we won't know for 10, 15 years whether or not that's actually the case.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the The direction of travel, there's a lot of, there is, understandably, and not incorrectly, a lot of nervousness and worry around what's happening with climate breakdown. But actually what humanity is doing is very impressive. And I think just one other sort of data point that I would pick up on, which I think is, I think we're right in saying that 2025, which is a sort of historic point in history, is when China's own CO2 emissions peaked. And that's very important because, of course, China is the world's biggest emitter, but it's also very important because, and I write about this in the book, throughout history, the world's biggest CO2 emitter has also been the world's major industrial power. And yet what appears to be happening is because of this shift, the energy transition, that relationship has now broken. It is no longer necessary for the world's major industrial power to be the world's major.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think maybe I should pick a positive one. I think there is, of course, it's something you said earlier, and I think it's absolutely right, that for every choice we make, there are related decisions, there are balances that you have to, you know, there may be a community that's impacted by a certain development which has a wider positive impact. But I think that there are some really quite simple points that, for example, the amount of space of land on planet Earth needed to supply solar power for all the needs of all the humans on planet Earth is not very much. Now, obviously, the answer doesn't mean then that you build one solar array to power the planet. It would neither be sensible nor technologically feasible. But there are some basic points here that the ability to transition to net zero renewable energy is already there. The technology is already there. And in fact, if we look at”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Change in the geography of the planet, but it opens up certain vistas, for example, the ability for new shipping routes. People talk about the northwest passage, the northeast passage, respectively giving power and economic influence to Canada and Russia. And then in a slightly longer time frame, a transpolar route. And why are these important? Because it massively shrinks the time needed to ship from Asia into Europe or into North America. And these are the primary shipping routes of global trade. So these are major changes that occur. And then, of course, finally, rising oceans threatens vast numbers of people, whether we're in South Asia, Bangladesh, or maybe in terms of numbers smaller, but entire countries when we're talking about Pacific atoll-based islands, small island states, places like Tuvalu and Var.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the River Nile, and obviously Ethiopia, there are millions of people living downstream in Sudan and Egypt, reliant on the water of the Nile. But as I say, quite often it's almost the almost existential nature of the need for fresh water means that countries pull back from the edge of actual conflict over it and start to work together. In fact, you could argue we're seeing this even in this current conflict over Iran where there's a kind of taboo around targeting desalination plants. Some have been here, but even in a very sort of gloves-off war or what appears to be, there's this realization that that's something that both sides are reluctant to go to. So that's one aspect of it. But then I think the other aspect, as you say, is the melting, whether we're talking about the melting of the polar ice cap. Now, obviously, this is an immense...”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think there's a range of factors here. I mean, one is obviously that the need to supply fresh drinking water to ever-growing world population has always been a challenge and remains a challenge. And of course, people have often talked about this idea of water wars. But what's rather interesting is that when you start to analyze this, it is almost as often the case that access to fresh water has forced countries to collaborate as it is the case that it is forced countries into conflict. So we have this kind of almost a paradox there that, yes, there are case studies of, you know, China, for example, is looking at building some dams in Tibet that would impact water supplies reaching India. People are probably quite familiar with the example of the great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. This is a huge dam.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Parts of Russia, two nuclear armed powers that seems pretty unforeseeable. But I think you can foresee a situation in which Russia becomes very dependent on China and many, many Chinese people are now living in parts of Russia. And that gives it, of course, greater influence and power.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of those parts of Russia on its maps as Chinese territory. So there's no doubt that in the longer term, China has these sorts of ambitions. So if we take together the fact that a changing climate makes those parts of Russia more propitious, particularly for agricultural growth, we take into account that parts of China are becoming less livable. There are already numbers of Chinese who have moved into that part of Siberia. We don't know the full numbers because the Russian government doesn't really want us to know it's very sensitive. The topic of immigration, of course, is sensitive for Russia just as it is for Europe and many other places. But we also have to take into account, of course, Russia's economic dependence on China, which is ever increasing, partly as a result of the war in Ukraine. So all those factors come together. And I think we can foresee a kind of economic colonialism underway. I think it's not very likely that China would try to invade.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The North Chinese plain, the area from Beijing going east to the ocean, is a sort of prime agricultural region of China, but it's also one that faces some quite severe Just to the north of there, you have a largely uninhabited region of Russia, which historically was very hostile, very difficult for humans to inhabit. But one of the important things to note about this is that historically China laid claim to this territory and Russia effectively seized it from China in the 19th century in this period of European imperial powers, notably Britain, France and Russia, all taking sort of chunks of China or seizing certain trading and other privileges. So that's the history. Now China in its present as a growing sort of neo-imperial power, one of its fixations is on reclaiming territories it regards as its own, that it regards as having lost. And of course, people are very familiar with Taiwan and the South China Sea, but less attention has been put on these claims it makes to Russia. But it has started marking.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of Ukraine's right to freedom and the heroism it's shown in that. But if we look at Russia, it is basically the largest northern hemispheric landmass. And in a heating world, it's clear that Russia has certain potential advantages. And this is where, as you mentioned, the role of Siberia comes in. Russia's demographics are pretty scary. It has a very small population relative to its size, and that population is shrinking. And that's without taking into impact of the war in Ukraine, where tragically, of course, so many young men in particular have lost their life. But so if you look at areas, particularly eastern Siberia, there are areas the size of Europe with a few hundred thousand people living in them, where just to the south you have parts of China where 500 million people live.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, thank you. I mean, I think one of the things about Russia is that its physical vastness means that in a way you can't envisage a single set of factors impacting a country that the size of a continent. And so as you rightly note, Russia is clearly at the moment a hydrocarbon economy. It depends on exporting its hydrocarbons, and particularly in the aftermath of its illegal invasion of Ukraine. It has shifted its market into Asia. Europe actually did, I think we have to be fair, a pretty good job of disconnecting itself from Russian hydrocarbons. People are right to say that there's more to do, but an extraordinary shift has occurred. And I say all this, I hope it's obvious that I'm no supporter of what Russia's done in Ukraine. In fact, I've worked there myself. I'm very, very supportive.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Change on these places, which are incredibly hot, very inhospitable. So I think there's people have really underestimated the threat to the Middle East of this climate shift.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What the energy transition means is not that we run out of oil, it means that the world doesn't need that much of it anymore. And so that is a real crisis. It's a cliff edge. And also, if we think about the nature of the ruler of Saudi Arabia, it's an absolute monarchy. You have Muhammad bin Salman, who's the crown prince, his father's still king, or the king is basically an active, very elderly. Muhammad bin Salman is a young man. He's in his 30s. So he is rightly, he probably has a 50, 60-year perspective of him ruling that country through this extraordinary transition, one which it's not entirely clear how the monarchy or the social order survives this transition from great wealth to an economy that no longer adds up. And that's before we've even talked about the impact of climate change.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Peninsula being probably the poorest place on planet Earth, or certainly one of the poorest, to arguably the richest and a place of immense power. But I think that's not in doubt. I think what's interesting about perhaps people haven't taken enough attention to is what's happening now. We are in a transition. This is not in doubt. We're in a transition of the end of the fossil fuel era. The only argument is how long that transition takes. Is it going to take until the middle of the 21st century, or might it happen in the next two decades? If you look at the behavior of the”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, thank you. And I certainly think that's one of the, even before the current events of the war in Iran, I would argue this is one of the most important parts of the story because we're living in the hydrocarbon age. And what that has meant is that countries that are able to access, export and control the supply of hydrocarbons have immense power. Now there are some exceptions. There are countries that have these resources in and have not been able to leverage that. But in most cases, the link is pretty clear. And perhaps nowhere more so than the countries of the Arab Gulf, if we look at Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia as a country is only 100 years old. I mean, you know, this is, so the idea of sort of permanence, and you're talking about these temporal shifts, you know, there is very little permanence in this world, including the existence of sovereign states. But clearly what we've gone from the Arabian...”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then say, Well, you know, the evidence isn't yet proven, or there's moderate global warming, or that the link between human activity and that warming is still being demonstrated. But what is not in doubt whilst not all populists are climate denialists, all politicians that indulge in climate denial appear to be populists.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More expensive. You may be able to do less of things you enjoy. You may be have to stop doing certain things. All the while in return, you're doing this because a whole series of people, probably before you were born or industrialists that you have no control over, have taken a series of actions that you weren't able to stop. So it lends itself to this populist idea that elites that we can't really control are taking control of our lives and are reducing our autonomy. And I think we see this in populist politics, whether it's in the US, whether it's in the UK, Brazil, and so on. And what's interesting is in some places, the populace will go all out denial. They'll say that the climate crisis is a scam. I think that's the term that Donald Trump uses. In other environments, they may be more cautious because the political norms don't allow them to go down that far.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not in doubt that they paid for scientific or what we might call quasi-scientific research to undermine the clear evidence of man-caused global heating. But then the other thing is, which I think we're now seeing rising to a real pitch, is this idea of populist politics? And why is there this link between populist politics and climate denial? Well, I tried to assess this in a book, and I think it's that the climate crisis is something that lends itself to exploitation by populists by definition, you can't see the climate crisis. I mean, you can see its effects, of course, you can see a devastating flood or something, but you can't see how many parts per million CO2 there are in the atmosphere. So you have to take on trust things that scientists and experts are telling you. And perhaps they're telling you that your life has become going to become...”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, thank you. And I was fascinated by this because when I was researching, one of the things that hadn't really struck me was the degree to which in the earliest days of people coming to understand the concept of the greenhouse effect, the concept of anthropogenic global warming, it wasn't political at all. In fact, of some of the earliest work on this was during the Nixon administration, which people might have a sort of assumption of a fairly kind of right-wing pro-business administration. But at that stage, of course, there wasn't really an idea that we would take action in response, or the action seemed a long way down the track. So there wasn't a reason for it to become political. But of course, as we follow this story on, there are various key players in it. One of them is the role played by major oil and gas firms, and yes, it's now absolutely...”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Carbon atoms, all that sort of thing. But on another level, we're talking about can you or can you not feed the expected population of the coming century? And in that sense, I think it's a fascinating project. And arguably, if it's successful, it may be the most important humanitarian project of its age”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not do very well in extreme heat. It doesn't grow well in hot weather. And so with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, scientists from and around the world has been a big team in Oxford University and other places are trying to regenetically re-engineer rice. So rice is currently a C3 plant, which talks three carbon atoms in its makeup. And the hope is that it could become a C4 plant. And why C4? Because C4 plants, and there are examples of plants such as maize, grow very well in very, very hot environments. And if you can re-engineer rice in that way, the ability to continue to expand rice production, to keep track of the ever expanding population of the planet may be secured. And so it's one of these things that on one level seems a bit obscure, a bit technical.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, thanks. Great question. I mean, I think one of the things to say from the outset is that this is a book which, yes, grapples with some very sobering and difficult subjects. But quite a lot of the book is an account of the human ingenuity that may or may not sort of get us out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves. So Rice is a great case study there. Rice is the most prevalent form of calorie that humans consume at the moment. As the world population grows, the demand for rice grows. But it's also, and I hadn't realized this, it's still something of a premium food. It's not premium in the way that eating meat is a mark of wealth in certain societies, but it's certainly that when people eat more rice, it's often because they've become wealthier. So the demand for rice around the world is huge. But rice is a plant that, in spite of perhaps what many of us that live in the global north, imagine,”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Terms of the way people pursue their lives. You have settled communities. External powers, whether we're talking about France historically in its sort of colonial experiences and post-colonial, or more recently Russia in the form of the Wagner group, this mercenary group and its successor organizations have ended up interfering and intervening in this area because they see the chance for the extraction of wealth and resources. So the Sahel, a region of hundreds of millions of people quite close to Europe, is facing all these effects sort of coming together at one time.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. So the Sahel region, of course, as I'm sure most listeners are well aware, is the band of territory that runs to the south of the Sahara Desert. And it's a region that has been beset by political instability. So in fact, every single country from the Atlantic Ocean on one side to the Red Sea on the other across that strip of Africa has experienced some kind of a military coup within the past 10 years. What's driving that? Well, in many cases, it's about climate. Climate is having an impact in so many ways. One is that the change in the climate is more intense in the Sahel than in many other regions of the earth. So we're seeing it's getting hotter, the extreme weather events are more frequent. And this is making it harder for one of the world's fastest growing populations to feed itself. So you have within this region, you've got different traditions.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Overarching categories, it seemed to be a way that we could navigate this story that is sort of easier for the reader and also me as the writer to sort of find my way around what is a vast topic.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The air, and I'm talking about things like geoengineering very controversial, complicated areas. Fire, perhaps the most obvious in this context, both in the sense of wildfires and the growing impact that they seem to be having, of course, as a result of climate breakdown, but also actually there's perhaps a simpler and more profound point, which is that all hydrocarbon energy is fire. It's about digging something out of the ground and setting fire to it. And that is one of the ways in which man has powered its industrial transition, its industrial growth over centuries. And then finally water, of course, without water, we're nothing. Access to fresh water can become increasingly contested, but there are also water acts as a threat, both in terms of catastrophic flooding but rising sea levels. So in these sort of”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. And as you said in your introduction, this is an almost sort of insurmountable task. It's such a big subject. And I wanted to break it down in a way that people, normal people could at least sort of start to get their heads around. So I focused on what we might call the classical elements, by which we mean earth, air, fire, and water. And there is a sense, and one can understand the ways in which the sort of ancient world people concluded that everything in some way came from those four elements, because actually there is a sense that if we break the world down in that way, we can understand it, or we can at least think categorically. So in the section on earth, I talk a bit about food, I talk a bit about minerals, the minerals that are going to be necessary for the climate transition. Air is clearly partly a story about extreme heat, but it's also a story about the things that we might do to try to change.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of these things, and that it would seem like a more urgent process. But I think that is also kind of accelerating in a way that many of us could have predicted. So in that sense, it feels like this book is very current.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, originally when I set out to do this, it seemed to me that this was a subject to be very clear what we're talking about is the sort of geopolitics of the climate, not the science, not the ecology. And it seemed to me that this was a subject that has a huge international import, but it's one that is only going to become more topical, that it increases in its salience in the coming years. And I wanted, as I suppose any writer does, to write a book that feels like it has a future, not just a present, but I suppose in a way events have caught up with me and overtaken me. I think both in terms of the kind of toxic politics, the climate denial politics of some world leaders, and also the just increased intensity of the extreme weather events. So we're seeing, we all knew that we were going to see more and more.”
2026-04-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Will the Climate Crisis Reshape Global Politics? With Former Diplomat and Author, Arthur Snell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT