YouSaid · the spoken record

Christiana Figueres

lines on the record: 52
first: 2023-12-04
most recent: 2023-12-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Well, thank you. No, it's for me to thank you for this podcast that is so helpful to listeners and demystifies so many topics and brings it to what I call the kitchen table.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the economy than geopolitics. It doesn't mean that geopolitics is irrelevant. It just means that now and from here on out, there is a growing impact and influence of market forces and political economy that we had not seen before.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I hope I'm not just wishful thinking here, but I think geopolitics will continue and populism for sure will continue to play a role. But increasingly, the engine of transformation and of the energy transition is moving from politics to the real economy. Increasingly, we're seeing that, for example, the demand of oil and gas coming down. The contraction of the demand of oil and gas not yet the production, okay, but the demand. But once you really see that the demand is contracting, well, supply is going to have to respond to that. So my sense is that the political economy, the market forces are increasingly having more of an impact on the decarbonization.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no doubt that geopolitics plays a role, but I would like to underscore that I'm saying a role, not the role. It plays a role because, yes, there is a lot going against us, but there's also, if you followed it, a recent bilateral agreement between the US and China on cooperating on climate. So it's very interesting that climate, because it is such a huge universal threat, it does seem to have the possibility of these countries separating out and ring-fencing climate change out of all of the other mess that they're in. If there is a mess between US and China now, it is probably worse than it has been in years, and yet they were able to ring fence climate change and agree on a collaboration there because of the magnitude of the threat.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Change that this will be this decision will be upgraded to the term not just phase down but phase out which was the original intent but that was watered down and so it you know ridiculous as it may seem words really count in legal text and you know there is a difference between phase down and phase out and you can imagine that the oil and gas sector does not want a term that says phase out so I actually would be able to I don't know if predict but certainly sense that those two words phase out or phase down Down and out is going to be central to the drama at this cup.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, the Bridgetown agenda cannot be adopted by the financial sector. I mean, she could get support for it, but it cannot be adopted there. They don't have the mandate for that. But they do have the mandate for the loss and damage fund that has substantially been structured, but not capitalized. And so a decision on how that is going to be capitalized would be incredibly effective. May I say where most of the drama is going to be? Around one little word, and that's where words really count. Currently, we have a standing decision from previous cops that says that all countries will commit to a phase down being the operative word here, a phase down of fossil fuels. There is, of course, the expectation on the part of those who are most concerned about the negative impacts of climate change.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mia Motley has been pushing actually something that is even bigger, which is a reform of the entire financial sector, starting with development banks, and she is absolutely correct in that because the development banks were designed as the financial institutions.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By twenty thirty, which is the deadline that has been established by science, we're going to triple that. We're going to get to almost 40 or 40% of all electricity around the world coming from renewables. The fact is that renewables, especially wind and solar, are now so cheap and so competitive with oil and gas that that is entirely doable. We're having deployment of solar and wind that is actually no longer marginal and linear, but exponential. So we can go from 12% to 40% over the next seven years. And I'm hoping that there can be an agreement on that. We can also have a very important agreement on something called the Fund for Loss and Damage, which is how are we going to support developing countries? That are already having but will continue to have huge losses and damages caused by climate change.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My gosh, if you put it in those terms, that really puts me up against the wall, Astronaut. Let's see, a Copenhagen outcome is no outcome. And that would be really tragic because we do need outcomes to come. A Paris outcome, and I have to say, it is not comparable to Paris because we're not looking at a legally binding text that has been adopted by everyone. It's a completely different scenario, a completely different scenario. We're looking for operative decisions, let's call it. And so which operative decisions can we expect if this does its job? One operative decision that would be incredibly helpful is a commitment, which is entirely realistic for everyone to say, right, we're currently at 12% of all the electricity in the world is being produced by renewables. That's where we are now.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And only rich people can get insurance. No, that means no insurance. Systemically uninsurable was what they told me. We should really care about climate change.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two degrees increase in temperature when what science tells us is we have to keep it at 1.5 increase from where we were in pre-industrial age. And we're getting very close. But the insurance companies said, if we get to a world that is two degrees warmer than the baseline, we will be in systemically uninsurable scenario. Now please consider how your personal life would be affected if you cannot buy insurance for anything, not for your home, if you own a home, not for your life, not for your health. Just imagine that the insurance companies would not be able to manage the risks that we would be facing constantly, and you have no access to insurance. That doesn't mean that the premiums go up.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can you imagine if that is multiplied by an order of magnitude? How is that going to affect us? How will it affect the fact that today we already have, let's call it a billion people at least under the poverty, at least. And if we do not do our job, those people will never be able to get above the poverty line. In fact, they will be subjected to even more extreme poverty. Think of the pressure that that puts on global peace, on global trade, on global food production. It is something that, frankly, is unmanageable. I had the insurance companies with whom I worked very intimately for the Paris Agreement. I had them come to me before the Paris Agreement and say, if we ever get to a world that goes above”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“conflict. Can you imagine the economic pressure on those countries that would still be within the livable range? Can you imagine the political chaos of what do you do about your borders? I mean, we have enough discussion about borders now”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when I say that this is marking the quality of life, I really mean that because picture, if you will, Rory, that if this warming continues, if this heating continues, we will have vast swaths of the planet that become completely uninhabitable. And they're inhabited now. So what do those people going to do? They're going to be forced migrants. So now picture that we already have a migration problem around the world, but multiply that times 10, 20, 30, 100. And you will see huge waves of migrations moving from uninhabitable lands into lands that can still produce food and that still have temperatures that are within the range of survivability. Can you imagine the military?”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should care about climate because it already is, but very quickly will deepen and will mark the quality of life on this planet. It is already marking our quality of life this year. We had what many people call the summer from hell. We had temperatures in most countries that had been completely unseen. The average temperature around the world had never been seen in 120,000 years. We had droughts, we had wildfires, we had floods, we had ocean warming like we have never seen. So we are already crossing many, many tipping points and breaking many records. And that will continue unless we do our job.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yahim he may have felt that unfortunately one of the traits that we in Latin America inherited from Spain is that we tend to name our children the same as the parents. And that was the case for my brother, that he carries the same name as my father. And my brother's son and grandfather You put on a newly born child. So I definitely did not follow that tradition, but my brother does carry my father's name. And so, yes, he probably thought that he had to step into that. I think my brother will be recognized for his commitment to sustainability. He came into power when sustainability was the topic and he introduced many measures that increased sustainability in the Costa Rican economy.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Humility My father was the most humble person I have ever met. He never put himself forward, being brilliant, absolutely brilliant person, self taught, didn't go to school, educated himself in the library, public libraries of Boston and New York, taught himself English, read all the classics, bred Napoleon's wars, and put together his military strategy when he needed it. He read philosophy. He was a self made man, and if there was one characteristic that I truly witnessed remember and aspire to that came from my father is humility. What a lesson that someone who was so brilliant and had in the eyes of the world, in the public so much power, never used that power. but rather was capable of convening very disparate opinions and being able to bring those disparate opinions to common ground.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Army or many farmers, so he sent everybody back to either the books or the plows, depending on where they came from, then he disbanded the National Army. And he said, this is a total misuse of national budget. And he took the budget from the Army and he put it into education, Costa Rica has one of the highest levels education on the continent and into biodiversity protection. From whence our income comes now? Because when you think about Costa Rica, you think about us as an eco-destination. We have three million tourists who come to Costa Rica every year, not because of our cities that are not worthwhile seeing, but because of the biodiversity that we have. We sustain 5% of the biodiversity of the world. And so you come to us to see the beautiful nature.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, wouldn't the world be in a very different place if we didn't have armies, right? Just think of the financial investment in armies, right? My father thought that was a total waste of national budget because the army had been used in Costa Rica to enforce anti-democratic decisions that did not want to respect the result of free elections. And so that's why he, being a farmer, decided that it was his responsibility who told him that? No one, but it was his responsibility to organize and lead a revolution against the government that had assured power and was victorious and then he took over power, disbanded his own army, sent everybody back to where they were, either university because there were many university professors who were actually in his revolution.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not the Father to his born children, but we also, especially as we grew up, we also understood that we stand in the legacy of a dedication to service and a dedication to social justice and a dedication to making the world a better place in many different ways because each of us has chosen a different way of doing it, but that legacy runs very strong. And I'm truly grateful to my father. And I have come to terms with it. I'm like, okay, you can't do everything. You can't be the father to the country and outlaw the army and change all the laws and do all of that. And also, you know, be sitting on the floor playing Lego with your kids. I mean, it just, you can't do everything. And so I have honestly forgiven him for not playing. Like, or the fact, despite the fact that he did play domino with us.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, Alistair, you do not discuss personal things with my father. No, no, no, no, no, no. Because of the responsibilities that he carried and, you know, incredible visionary and revolutionary leader and then democratic leader. I mean, what a personality. He outlawed the army in Costa Rica. He rewrote the Constitution. It is to him that we have to bank for the fact that we now invest more in education and biodiversity than most other countries. I mean, honestly, this country is the marvel that it is substantially because of my father and what he did in those years. But that's the space that he occupied. He had no space for chit-chat, no space for personal woo-woo things, sentimental things, none of that. I mean, just forget that. And we were very clear about that. So we did pay a cost in the sense that he was”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“3 million was the population of Costa Rica at the time. Now, that is the only thing that I understood of the whole interview. And you can imagine for a little girl there standing behind my father's chair, I just felt a knife go through my heart. I went like, wait, what? Hold on. I expected the number six, right? Because he was married twice. He had two children in the first marriage, and then the marriage with my mother from whence came four children. So I expected six million. And it took me a long time to understand that my father saw himself and understood himself and is viewed today as the father of the country.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Huge cost worry, and I can tell you, you know, an anecdote that illustrates this, I must have been maybe, I don't know, six or seven, maybe eight, but not more, when my father was in an interview. A journalist who had traveled to Costa Rica to interview him about politics and economics in Latin America, why I was there, I have no idea because, of course, I understood absolutely nothing. But at the end of the interview, the journalist said, Dompe, which is the loving way that my father is addressed, Dompe, how many children do you have? And my father, without even losing a beat, he said 3 million.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You've been in those shoes. So I'm actually post the drama. I'm actually quite grateful that it has made me a more empathic, a deeper person.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Head because I had never had the experience. And when I went through the experience in the painful way that I did, all of a sudden now when I know that there is a family that is going through this incredibly difficult situation, I am so much more capable of holding that pain and that process than I was before I went through it before. And I really am convinced that there is no way that you can put yourself in another person's shoes if you haven't worn those shoes yourself. The same goes through the fact that I've now lost two siblings and I'm in the process of losing my third sibling. You can't understand the impact of the death of someone who you love deeply and is very, very close to you. You can't understand that unless you...”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am actually, in retrospect, I am grateful for the lessons that came out of that pain and feel that I am a more mature person for that and certainly much more capable of dealing with my own difficult situations. And also, Alistair, very important for me, much more empathic because I was in such pain and because I went through such a difficult time, I can now pretty readily put myself into the shoes of people who are going through incredible personal situations. I couldn't do that before. And I mean, to put it very clearly, I remember having been told by female friends of mine, I'm going through a divorce before this. And I just thought, oh, okay, well, they're going through a divorce. And I always said, how can I support? But it was out of my head.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think so, Alistair. It's a good question. Thank you for asking it. I'm not going to tell you to get lost. It's a good question. No, I don't think so, I really think that it was the pain of my marital situation blowing up. That was the cause of that. And to the contrary, actually, I guess many people, if not most or all people, there's a huge amount of learning and growth that comes when we hit bottom and when we are in incredibly stressed situations. And I did learn a lot. And I applied those learnings then to my day job. And I must say, although it was incredibly difficult to deal with my personal pain and my personal trauma while in the evenings, let's say, while during the day I'm holding this process.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That this is the responsibility not only of national governments. This is the responsibility of everyone, subnational governments can contribute, corporations can contribute, financial institutions, so everybody who is not a national government have also been given a place in the contribution.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That recognizes historical responsibility of one group of countries, but also future responsibility of everyone, that is not an easy agreement to come to. The other thing that was quite different in the Paris Agreement is that it is based on national contributions on each country making a legally binding commitment of how much are they going to reduce over a certain period of time and then doing a monitoring and evaluation of the compliance of that. And so that was also quite different in the sense that every country had then to make public what their contributions were going to be. And the third thing, I mean, there are many things that make it quite unique, but the third things that I would point out is that for the first time, there was a recognition.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the three things that make Paris very, very different from anything that came before is, number one, there is responsibility attached to every country of the world. Prior to that, there was responsibility attached only to industrialized countries because industrialized countries carry the historical responsibility for having caused climate change. And so you can understand the developing countries say, wait a minute, you guys, you caused this, you fix it up, don't talk to us. Industrialized countries say, well, yeah, okay, maybe I'm willing to accept the fact that I caused it. But if I look into the future and I look, you know, at your development curves, I see that you're coming up in your emission curves. So we can't exempt you from something that is going to be in place for the next few decades. You need to come on board too. And so, you know, to get to something that is fair.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you start almost trying to find the low hanging fruit. What of all of this could actually begin to move into the at least potentially theoretically approved and agreed bucket? And then you work yourself up into the more contentious issues. And those issues necessarily stay there to the end. And they are interlinked. You move one, as Alistair has said, you move one piece out and it completely changes the puzzle for everyone who is attached to that piece. And everybody's attached to different pieces. So it is a constantly moving Tetris game until it finally settles.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's fair. Plus, you know, let's just look at the complexity. In Paris, we were negotiating 67 different issues along five parallel tracks. So, you know, it's not like you're working on one text. You're working on many different texts that cover a very wide gamut of issues. And they're all interlinked, Rory. That's the issue. They're all interlinked. It is not true that you leave something for the end. You work on this for a whole year. You're working on the text that will be adopted at the end of the year and there is very serious work on the part of everyone. But what happens is that first you have to collectively develop a text, you try that, you know, 196 pens on one paper. So that in and of itself is rather complicated. And that's assuming that each country only has one opinion, which they don't usually do.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some humanity because honestly, these people, all of us, you know, we work in and out day in, day out. And it's incredible, it's humanly exhausting. So we did cut down the let's call the overshoot of the time to a day, sometimes 12 hours, which was a definite improvement over the three days that we had before.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's such a good question, Alistair. I've thought about that a lot myself. And it's certainly, you know, how we're creatures of tradition and of habit and we have these habit energies. And when I joined this process, which was way, way, way back in the early 90s, I did observe how we caught ourselves into the habit of that, of what you've just described, except it used to be two and three days beyond the deadline. And I, in fact, even remember the Kyoto meeting that we had in 1997 when we adopted the Kyoto Protocol where the venue ran out of food because, you know, they just didn't expect it to go that long. But the point is that we had gotten ourselves into this habit. And that's one of the things that we really worked on to bring dial this back down to some rigor and some discipline about deadlines and also”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A huge risk, but we also thought, Alistair, give me one country that is not affected by climate change. None. Every single country is affected by climate change. Every single country can contribute in differentiated ways, for sure, but every country can and must contribute to addressing climate change. So if that is true, if both of those statements are true, therefore we have to get to something that every country can agree to. That was not easy. And it caused a lot of drama. But in the end, we had for the first time ever in the UN a unanimous decision that was legally binding that affects the evolution of the global economic system.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Able to take decisions by consensus and consensus in a strictly legal interpretation means consensus is in the hands of the person who is chairing the meeting to say I sense that there is enough support in the room to adopt decision whatever And we did after Copenhagen adopt quite a few decisions at future meetings by consensus, but with the dissent of a handful of countries and that caused major political havoc and in one case legal havoc. So by the time we got to Paris we and the Secretariat had decided that we would not adopt the Paris Agreement by consensus we would do it by unanimity that completely changes the situation that really ups. Of the game here because that means if one country does not agree, it does not get adopted. So we self-imposed that very high standard on ourselves and we worked for five years.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we actually did third party analysis of everything that went wrong and then dedicated quite a few years to addressing each of the issues that went wrong. But in big picture, we understood that the process had to be very transparent, that there was absolutely no tolerance anymore for small meeting rooms with just a few representatives, even if those representatives had been authorized by other countries to speak for them. That was just totally gone, which gets back actually to Alistair's question about how do you get everybody to unanimously approve. The fact is that there are no voting rules in this convention. They were never agreed to. They will never agree to. We can go back down that rabbit hole, but let's just take it for a fact that there are no voting rules. So in principle, you would be”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Amazing onto all the television cameras of the world delivered this impassioned speech about the totally failed process that she was witnessing. So I was there, you know, there are many Copenhagen survivors, as I call us. And it really marked us. It marked all of us”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the drama there, we had one country delegate representative from Venezuela who actually stood up on her official desk that says Venezuela on it. I mean, you have to understand, right? In a UN context, all these desks, each one has a name, the country. It's a very, very formal, very exceedingly formal context. And we have this beautiful and very energetic compelling, eloquent delegate standing on her desk screaming to request the floor and actually doing so with such verb using her metal nameplate, country nameplate, that she actually cut into her hand. And when she finally got the floor on behalf of the COP president, she was bleeding. And then, you know, delivered these.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yes, it was yet again another of these yearly meetings. And it was touted to be the meeting at which the world would come together for a global agreement on climate change. And there was a lot writing on that. In fact, for those working on this Copenhagen was no longer Copenhagen, it was Copenhagen with an H because there was so much hope that this was going to be the moment and the time at which the world would come together. And that did not happen, but not only did it not happen, it was a disaster. The process was very, very poorly managed. Global leaders came in and had all kinds of secretive meetings. The COB president resigned and was substituted by someone else who had no idea about UN rules. We had, just to give you a sense.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, let's just recognize that the Paris Agreement was not the result of two weeks in Paris, right? It was the result of five years of work consistently and also very much of a reaction to what I call the most successful failure of the United Nations, which was the Copenhagen meeting at the end of 2009. And so I was given the responsibility to pick up the political process out of the trash can and see what I could do with it.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Order to strengthen the energy independence of countries so that they do not have to depend on oil and gas. Because oil and gas, let's face it, is being exported by quite a few regimes that have proven themselves to be complicated.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before the Russian invasion. So it is really quite concerning that they are now digging in. Now, next to that, and I think it's really important to see the two effects of the Russian invasion. Because one prices soared and they just dug in to their buy now obsolete resources. But what is much more interesting is the fact that so many countries realized that depending on imported oil and gas is actually very, very dangerous for their national security, their national energy security. And so the other factor that we see is an incredible spike in the investment into renewable energies, not on the part of oil and gas, but on the part of all other actors. An investment into renewables”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Invasion of Ukraine. Very interesting, right? Because what happened there is that because oil and gas was weaponized by Russia, the prices soared as we all witnessed. And these oil and gas companies, for nothing that they did, not because they improved their performance or nothing, absolutely nothing that they did. Their profits just went through the roof unprecedented profits. And then the big old dollar was just too tempting. And what did they start to do? They started to buy back shares. They started to give their shareholders larger dividends. They started to lobby against climate policies, especially in the United States. They did everything. Against the evolution of the energy sector, which they had been on a track.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would actually divide that into two timeframes, Rory. My sense is that at least the publicly traded, perhaps not so true for the state owned, but the publicly traded companies, especially the European ones, were very sincerely on a path of transition from their past and current business model onto a new business model with new resources, still understanding themselves to be an energy company, which they are, but no longer dominated by the oil and gas sector, but rather moving into first a broader portfolio of energy sources and gradually more predominantly into renewables. That was true of most of these publicly traded companies until the Russian”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But in this case, the COP president is not just an Emirati citizen. He actually is also the head of Abnok, which is the state-owned oil and gas company. That presents a major challenge, and I have said from the beginning that my concern is not that he is the oil and gas head, but rather that up until a few months ago, he had not separated himself from that position and was able to come to this challenge that he has with an impartiality that is necessary. That is the challenge.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Defines its policies. So I'm partial. I am partial to environmental integrity. And it was clear to me when I went to the UN to follow my role that I could not be partial to my country's position anymore, that I had to step out of that and assume my role with complete impartiality with respect to all other countries and all of their political interests and positions. The same thing has to be done by a COP president. And that is, of course, a different...”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It very much depends on how the president of the COP manages this situation and stewards the meeting. Let me put it this way. I was the executive secretary of the Climate Convention and I had to work every year with a different COP president because they rotate every year. And the one thing that is absolutely fundamental for both the executive secretary in my case, but everyone else before and after me, and for the COP president is to be completely impartial to all political interests. It was frankly very difficult for me because I come from the wild and wonderful Costa Rica, a very, very proud country. I am a very proud citizen. I am very proud of the environmental integrity with which Costa Rica”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the right path, but more importantly, are we doing it at the speed and scale that is required by science? And the answer to that is no. So then the second question is, now what? Now, Christiana, you said you were not diplomatic, but were you being a tad diplomatic when you used the word unusual? Did you buy unusual in the UAE hosting this event? Did you perhaps mean inappropriate or potentially counterproductive? Or do you just mean unusual? No, I mean unusual because it has only happened once before when we had a cop in Qatar, which is also an oil and gas producing country. So I do mean unusual, like numerically mathematically, statistically unusual. But you don't feel there's something fundamentally worrisome about the fact that there could be a kind of inbuilt conflict of interest about the whole thing. You're confident it can still work.”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has the authority, the credibility, the standing to host a conference on climate change and whether there are too many oil and gas executives who are present, et cetera, et cetera. It is rather unusual, I must say. But it was the decision of that region to host it in Dubai this year. Now, what makes COP28 a little bit unusual from the other is that this is the year in which something will occur called the global stock take, which is an exercise mandated by the Paris Agreement of 2015. It is the process in which all countries have to report what they have done on their decarbonization and increasing resilience efforts, and then come up with a compounded sense of whether we are moving”
2023-12-04 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 49. Christiana Figueres: COP28, Costa Rica, and surviving the climate crisis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source