YouSaid · the spoken record

Rajiv Shah

lines on the record: 45
first: 2023-12-18
most recent: 2023-12-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And say, gosh, that's not the solution. And it's not. The solution has to be policy, governance, regulation. We know what it is. You could wipe out child poverty by 50% in America by implementing one small policy we just tested the child tax credit and making that a part of how we insist on making sure more American kids don't grow up poor in a wealthy country. So we know what it takes to actually succeed. And when philanthropy understands that and respects that, it's much more honest and much more impactful.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's been a plan. It's not a plan for us in our example. It is only worthwhile if it stimulates broader political and social. Change that makes the world more equitable. And others can judge whether making the world more equitable is what people are trying to do with their philanthropy. You know, I'd argue all day long that at the end of the day, Bill and Melinda, when they established their system, were trying to do that. I'd argue that John D. Rockefeller, when he created our institution, with at the time almost 2% of American GDP, did it with an idea of using science to lift up those who were living in extreme poverty at home and around the world. But those examples, I think, are very few and very far between. And most philanthropy, there's $800 billion of philanthropy on an annual basis. The vast, vast majority of that is not informed by that deep, absolute, studied, and humble commitment to creating a more equitable world for everybody. And that's perhaps why people look at philosophy.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, okay. But I got to work with Bill when we were in that phase, and Melinda and Bill and Patty Stone. Everybody was like, okay, we don't know this stuff yet. So even though we might sound confident amongst ourselves in private, we have a lot of learning to do. And I write in the book about ask a simple question, start from a blank sheet of paper, make some early bets in order to learn. And that discipline of learning rigorously is something that I have seen very, very few philanthropists actually do because it's hard work. And I guess when you're super rich, it might be more fun to go out on the boat than sit in a slum in Dhaka. But my advice would be... You're going to do it and you're going to make it a big part of who you are and what your contribution in the world is, do the learning deeply and sit in that slum and listen.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To say, you know, I don't have to be smarter than everybody on the things they do. If there's an organization that has been effective at pursuing a social justice goal or providing education to minority kids, let's just get them the resources we have quickly. That I really admire. And, you know, we don't at Rockefeller have the business model or the scale of philanthropy to do that. But that is an alternative approach. And then I'd say the third is for the things that are going to occupy the intellect and the energies of the people that are”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just point to things that I think offer a path forward. One is collaborate with expert institutions that have a longer track record and you can judge them based on what they've done. So the fact that Bezos and IKEA, for example, said, look, we sort of trust you, the Rockefeller Foundation, on this one issue of bringing renewable energy to a billion people that live in energy poverty. And we're going to provide $500 million of our money to you to help build an alliance to do that that is largely local, that is informed by 110 years of being in these countries, in these markets that will involve building up the human capital base in the DRC in Nigeria, in Zambia, in India, in Indonesia, and is empowering of others. So that's one path. Another path is, I think, what McKinsey did. I don't know her, but I look at with awe that she has the ability.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think picking on the philanthropic initiatives when done really, really well, there's some that are done very poorly, and that's should be very open to critique. But what Bill and Melinda have done to vaccinate children around the world, or not even themselves, I mean, to enable UNICEF and WHO and thousands of local organizations around the planet to put their expertise to use with more resources has been an extraordinary gift to the world.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not. I mean, but at the same time, the philanthropy, when done well Can have extraordinarily positive human benefits. That's usually not the problem. The problem is the political engagement that locks in a system that refuses to take in real tax and regulatory reforms and creates inequity in our economy. Or the problem is the business practices themselves that generate problems that we then have to deal with. And those businesses being so self-protective like take social media, that entire industry lives within Section 230 of the Federal Communication Code that gives them blanket immunity for virtually anything that happens on their platform so we could protect MySpace's ability to be a successful company and Infoseeq in 1996. You know, that's crazy. And those companies obviously, for self-preservation, invest a lot in protecting those kinds of regulatory safe.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Obviously, a sent to billionaire, so I don't know the lifestyle difference between having 100 billion or 70 billion, but I imagine it's not that much.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say they have a responsibility to be clear eyed and honest about what it takes to actually solve these problems. So for example, if you look at inequity in the United States, in my view, American tax policy and regulatory policy are the prime contributors, especially since the mid-80s to now, to a shift in the level of equity and opportunity that exists in this country. I give credit to a Warren Buffett who can go out there and say, hey, the rich should be taxed more. Inheritance taxes should be real and collected. And I pay less taxes as an Uber sentibillionaire than my assistant who has a regular day job. And that's just wrong. But the fact that I can only name Warren in saying that is what the problem is. It's like everyone should be saying that because it's so obvious. I'm not.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That respectful of the ambition, but a little skeptical about the approach where people say, well, I don't need to do that because engineering will just solve the problem. And I'm going to restructure education in America by engineering, a new solution without talking to kids. So I see both.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, maybe not so much, right? And the reality is I make a big distinction between the super wealthy who Who they seek to serve, and frankly, from experts and those that have built kind of organizations and institutions populated with those experts versus those who just sort of say, look, I made a lot of money doing one thing. And as a result, I'm really, really smart at everything I can potentially do. And so I'm just going to do this or that without the benefit of that kind of learning process and engagement. And the truth is I see both. And I put Bill Gates in the first category and I write about in the book a learning journey that I had with him and Melinda. And Melinda was a huge part of it, you know, sitting in homes in rural Nigeria or in Dhaka and Bangladesh and saying, tell me about your life, what really happens here when people try to help and spending their time doing that made a big difference. And then I see philanthropists often in Silicon Valley, but I”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, but so now we're launching an effort to reach 7 million people with solar in eastern Congo, and we're doing that In a way that we believe is protected against corruption. We worked with the government to change the regulatory framework to allow these local developers to be successful. We've created a community of local developers that are building out solar. We've worked with small businesses that will be the customers of this that are going to buy power, improve their businesses, create jobs, and bring hope to a place that has been ravaged by unspeakable harms to children, boys and girls. And that gives me hope.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I thought, hey, that's super compelling. I worked for years with all kinds of high level partners, including the Chinese government at the highest levels, only to fail miserably when Senator Leahy passed a piece of legislation that precluded us from engaging in that project. And it was embarrassing and it hurt. But I learned from that that you have to know who you're betting on when you take on these big projects. And I had underestimated the US environmental community and its impact on Senator Leahy, who's a friend and someone I admire. I had underestimated President Kabila, who ran the DRC and how he would react. And I had hoped that he might react in a way that would allow us to abide by our standards and transparency and anti-corruption, but that wasn't the case. And so, you know, I learned from that and say, okay, let's just go to the next big bet, but let's be more conscientious of who we're betting on.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To do something big and bold together to show the world that these two rising powers can cooperate for good. I ran with that construct and tried to turn the example of that into this large hydropower dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo that would have provided four cents per kilowatt hour power to 250 million people and had the climate impact of taking one-third of the U.S. auto fleet off the road.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the aspiration trap is what I think we just saw at the COP, which is hey, we know we can't get language on phasing out fossil fuels, so what can we do? And let's embrace all these loopholes to make it possible. Or it's saying we don't have the will right now to finance energy transition in 81 countries around the world. So let's do these super incremental things and hope that that helps. And in lieu of that, if we just set the goal of let's move a billion people out of energy poverty through renewables, recognize that what is required to do it and put together the partnerships to get that done, that's the counterpoint. And to me, those counterpoints offer real optimism. Now, you mentioned the Inga Dam. I really felt strongly had to include that story because it was a massive failure after the Sunnylands conference between President Obama and President Xi, America and China decided we would try.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Include immunizing 980 million kids and saving 16 million child lives over 20 years. They include recognizing we could have had 1.6 million cases of Ebola in 2014, including a few hundred thousand in the United States, and ending that crisis in three small West African countries with only 30,000 cases, two in the United States, no transmission in our borders. I take away from all of those examples, including some failures, both lessons learned and an absolute conviction that if we don't actually try to solve these problems, if we don't set the goal Impossibly high, we have no chance of success. And if we do, we can actually sometimes succeed.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, my pitch is that our mindset changes and our capacity to imagine what it takes to solve a problem changes when we set the goal with high ambition. And instead of that, when we sort of say, let's just do what we can, let's just do the incremental thing. We tend to let the pessimism of the day overwhelm our imagination. And so to me, a big bet starts with setting a bold goal, immunizing every child, for example, for basic childhood vaccination. It involves betting on innovations, finding those innovations that are scalable, in this case childhood vaccination. It involves building super unlikely partnerships across the public sector and private sector vaccine companies and UNICEF or Republicans and Democrats. And it mostly requires having a discipline around measuring results. And I'd say the examples in the book.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, that's what some say. I mean, I've always found progress with bipartisanship happens in private behind closed doors. So if you listen to what they say on TV, you're going to be really discouraged. But I actually wrote the book, Big Bets to Be Optimistic, and I have a whole chapter in the book that I titled Make It Personal, because in my experience, it was praying together behind closed doors. It was getting to learn about people's families and where they're from and what their values were. Sure. That opened their eyes as to how we could partner to transform the fight against hunger”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, to these framework conventions and these other pieces. But the truth is, honestly, when we've made big progress on big global collective action problems, There have been as much Republican participation in leadership as Democratic. And sometimes that's surprising, but it was George W. Bush that started and ultimately.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think two things. One is it should be reshaping the multilateral institutions that it created after World War II, the World Bank, the IMF. The other institutions that have been the leading entities supporting a development vision for the rest of the world. These things were created after World War II with a basic idea, which is if lower income countries can grow and can abide by Western norms and standards around economic management, we will avoid World War III, be safer and more secure, and more prosperous. And where that's worked, that is absolutely bared itself out. The problem is in 80 years we've made almost no changes to these institutions. So we put together an effort called, it's a little technical called the Capital Adequacy Framework. But deep analysis shows that you could basically generate hundreds of billions of dollars annually if you modernize these institutions to operate like modern institutions do.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I would argue no wealthy economy right now is sufficiently focused on the intersection of climate and development. And there was a time 20 years ago when we did big things. We said, hey, we should wipe out the debt that highly. Indebted countries have, and they should use that money to get 60 million girls into school. And by the way, that worked. Or we said there's an AIDS crisis and we should prevent a whole hollowing out of the populations of 50 countries around the world. And we went out and solved that problem over decades. Those are the kinds of big bets that I write about that we need in the world. And right now, it's absolutely not happening in climate. I think John Kerry's been the hero of the COP to the extent that anything good happened there. You know, I give a lot of credit to the US, but really to Secretary Kerry.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And give me a plan where I can increase the electricity available to my companies and my population by a factor of 10 or 20 over the next 20 years. And right now, the task of helping those countries do that is falling to the global energy alliance, this public-private coalition. Which is fine, but it's only fine if public sector entities get on board at much bigger scale.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Source of massive rents that go to very, very small number of companies and countries. On the other hand, if you can help the 81 countries I'm referring to develop modern renewable or clean energy systems that provide high levels of energy, then more people can benefit in a totally digital economy. That's why when I sit with Prime Minister Modi or with heads of state in Africa, They just want to know, they're like, look, I don't want coal, I don't want heavy fuel oil. I certainly don't want backup diesel generation, which is super inefficient 60 cents a kilowatt hour. But help me with how I get cheap baseload power, how I get batteries so that I can use my wind and solar resources effectively.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, AI could go either way. Without question, consume massive amounts of additional energy. So all the people who said, hey, this is peak energy consumption and now we're just going to get more and more efficient and we'll therefore consume less energy in the future. I think that's proven to be wrong because AI alone will change that calculus very dramatically. So the question then becomes, you know, how do you meet those needs? And if you can only meet those needs in wealthy countries. Then yes, then AI will be, as Kai Fu Li and others have noted.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say, in our case, the people who are taking these projects to scale a group called Nuru in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Tata Power in India. Where we're rolling out one gigawatt of solar in the state of Maharashtra, for example, those are local companies. And those are local companies that once they have the technology construct can innovate, can lower the cost, can operate, and can expand, and capitalizing those joint ventures is what I'm talking about.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If we were really thinking big about what it takes to solve the problem, you would have, you know, big negotiations like the cops say, okay, how do we provide 50 or $100 billion of this kind of free capital to do this in country after country after country so that people can access all these technologies that the technologists are so excited about?”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just say one challenge though, yeah. The problem is this shouldn't be a task that's left up to a handful of philanthropic institutions.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the hold up is financing, and in this case, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bezos Earth Fund, and the IKEA Foundation, we each made a $500 million grant. So we came up with a billion and a half dollars of concessional or free money. And with that, we're able to get other investors into these projects. So, for example, I write in my book about a visit to Eastern Congo. Post conflict, just a tragic, difficult place to work. Never had any real electricity, no grid power. We have a plan to reach 7 million people in the eastern part of Congo with solar electricity. The first project was $80 million. We made a $7 million grant and we're able to find the rest of the capital from actual investors to make that project valuable. So that's how you stretch grant money to make these things happen.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And 10 years ago when we were first developing these systems, it would cost a dollar, a dollar 20 cents a kilowatt hour to provide power. Batteries were expensive. You needed people there to manage the energy and battery management systems. Metering was impossibly hard. Now with technology, you basically can run those things by artificial intelligence from afar, take personnel costs out of the system. Smart meters allow people to pay by their mobile phone just based on the power they use every day or every week. Battery costs have come down dramatically and by the switch to certain types of battery chemistries. You can transform the possibilities. that we built as a public-private partnership to actually reach a billion.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, this is where I see a tremendous amount of opportunity because there is technology that can actually prevent carbon emissions while simultaneously lifting up, often for the first time the world's poorest communities. And this is where Rockefellers put a ton of our time effort and energy. What are the technologies I'm most excited about? Small-scale distributed renewables like solar, mini grids connected to battery systems, using smart meters to actually for the first time provide always on electricity to villages in northern India or rural Nigeria. We're already rolling out thousands of these, reaching 1.3 million people, and we have plans in place and projects underway that will reach 77 million people who live in energy poverty with these types of solutions from the democratic Republic of Congo to the state of Bihar in India. That's transformational stuff.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a super legitimate concern, and the reality is there have been moments in our history when we've looked around the world and said, let's reshape institutions to do the right thing at scale after World War II, for example. And we're in one of those moments.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the dollar. Zambia was even higher than that. In country after country, so they're actually cutting health services. They're cutting food subsidies. And then you're asking them to make the kinds of inflation reduction act style large-scale infusions of capital to transition their energy economies, which they do not. And they look at you and say, that's crazy. How are we supposed to do this? And why do we now have to do this when you the world's greatest contributors to global warming developed your economies on cheap coal and cheap fuel?”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So I don't think it's fair to say it hasn't worked. It hasn't been done. Absolutely. So the total wind and solar deployed in the world in 2021, 6% was deployed in these 81 countries. If you look at just Africa, 0.6%, despite having 50% of the world's landed solar radiation. So it's not fair to say it hasn't worked. It's fair to say it hasn't happened. It's not happening. Then you could say, well, why is it not happening? And the reality is coming out of COVID, rich countries spent 30% of their GDP shoring up their economies, monetary policy, fiscal policy, you know, major cash infusions, that created inflation, that led to interest rate increases. Right now, 60 countries around the world are teetering on the edge of a debt crisis. So I was in Kenya, 62 cents on the dollar of their public budget is going to pay off debt that has skyrocketed borrowing costs. Ghana, it's 7%.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They didn't. There are a few efforts I'd love to describe. One that we've helped create on the unofficial side of the COP, the public-private partnership space that I think are very promising. But in an official context, absolutely nothing was done to actually pay for anything.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In an environment where they don't have the money and we're not able to provide it is not going to happen. And I said before this COP that the judgment of success for the cop shouldn't be the language in the agreement. It should be whether wealthy nations show up with financing solutions to pay for an energy transition in these 81 countries.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, it's not just pay the most. I mean, they get trapped in poverty. So there are a billion people on earth that consume less than 150 kilowatt hours of electricity a year per capita. What that means is that's not enough power to have one light bulb and one small home appliance powered through the course of a year. There are three and a half billion people in 81 countries that consume less than 1,000 kilowatt hours per capita per year, which means you live in economies where most of your businesses need backup diesel generators and they need power that's very costly, very dirty, and it deeply constrains your ability to grow and move your communities up the economic ladder. In that context, asking those countries to then make the $3.8 trillion a year of investment required to transition their energy systems.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By any reasonable estimate, we're right now barreling towards two and a half to three degrees centigrade, which is catastrophic. So what am I most worried about? I think the big policy decisions in wealthy countries, the US, Europe, and China. Means that the world”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd say two big things. One, you were getting at with that question, and that is what people, most people don't realize is we're crossing these irreversible climate tipping points faster than even the most concerned scientists expected, you know, losing ice the size of Texas in Antarctica has irreversible sea level and ocean acidification impacts that happened faster than scientists expected. So even if the world miraculously achieves 1.5 degrees, which is 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, even at that level, we're going to have more climate impacts than people predicted 10 years ago when Copenhagen and Paris and those kind of numbers were made the global target. And then secondarily, we're off even achieving those global numbers, right?”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, to wealthy communities. So we have a lot of work to do that is not part of the official reality of these COP meetings. And if we're really going to solve climate change, that's where we're going to solve them. Enforcement, financing, technology access, in addition to statements that imply where the quote-unquote world needs to go.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Exactly. But it's been 100 years, for goodness sakes. We've learned a few things and we know what the right thing to do is. So, no, big oil should not in general be at the table. And there should be all the things that are not enforcement. There's no enforcement, as you just pointed out. Financing is my biggest concern because I think people believe, oh, technology will just emerge and save us. And the track record of scaling technology across the 81 economies that are where we will win or lose the fight against climate change is terrible. And it has only been successful when there's real financing. And right now, the opposite is happening. And I can get into that. And access. If you're trying to put battery storage on a grid in Nigeria right now, forget about the price. You can't even access the technology because it's all going to Teslas and Rivian's being sold in California and New York.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right ahead if you want. Look, big oil was at the table, obviously, was at the head of the table. Yes. And the UAE has committed to $150 billion of new fossil fuels exploration and development in the context of the run-up to this COP. So do I think that's optimal? Absolutely not. I mean, we should have a system to negotiate a global agreement that holds big oil accountable and that encourages more people to divest. As the Rockefeller Foundation, an endowment, by the way, created by the wealth of Standard Oil 100 years ago made the decision to divest. And we think others should do so.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then throughout this entire meeting, there's been mixed messages that are totally antithetical to the data and knowledge of reality that has embraced carbon capture and storage, which by, I mean, the only real scientific debate is whether carbon capture and storage can abate 0.1% or 0.44% of total energy emissions. It's completely not a solution. And yet, you know, you see all these fossil fuel companies embracing CCS in their own supply chains to extract and burn more fossil fuels. So there are loopholes all over this. But at the end of the day, it's progress because now countries will have to show up in two years with real plans and they'll be held accountable in the court of public opinion.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think one loophole is there's no real timeline. It says by the end of this critical decade, but it means you could start the design of phasing out fossil fuels, which is a multi-decade kind of project seven years from now after effectively it's too late. To save the planet and get anywhere near 1.5 degrees. The fact that they use the transition instead of phase-out language implies that there's space for the long term use of fossil fuels so long as it's quote unquote abated.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you know, when you make when these types of negotiations take place, there are enough loopholes to create space for everybody. That's how they got this through. First, they gaveled it through at the end without sort of a roll call vote. And so we'll see how vested different countries, including big ones like India and small ones like small island states that potentially were underrepresented, will feel about it. But the loopholes are massive here.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, Kara, thank you for having me, and I appreciated the chance to be at the COP meeting in Dubai. This was an interesting COP because, of course, it was hosted by a petro state that has benefited from windfall profits in the fossil fuel industry over the last 18 to 24 months. And at the end of the day, the language, I think, is meaningful progress. notes that we need to transition away from fossil fuels. I wrote the book Big Bets to make the case that Big Bets start with knowing the data and understanding issues deeply. And you don't solve climate change. You don't even protect against catastrophic consequences of climate change without embracing a transition away from fossil fuels. That's, of course, been known for decades. So the fact that this is the first time that language is being embraced is in fact a major step forward.”
2023-12-18 · On with Kara Swisher · Will Big Bets to Solve Climate Change Pay Off? With Rajiv Shah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT