From the creation of the International Sustainability Standards Board and conversion of coal fire power plants to investment in innovations like carbon-capturing concrete and potty-trained cows, join hosts Peter Reynolds and Geoff Sheffrin as they explore how financial markets, along with the government, can make a lasting impact in the fight against climate change.
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From the creation of the International Sustainability Standards Board and conversion of coal fire power plants to investment in innovations like carbon-capturing concrete and potty-trained cows, join hosts Peter Reynolds and Geoff Sheffrin as they explore how financial markets, along with the government, can make a lasting impact in the fight against climate change.
Subscribe on your favourite podcast app and don’t miss an episode!
Also available on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkTMDHlF8N8lVIWzyPl4yhw?sub_confirmation=1
Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087081536326
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mothernature_podcast/
[Start of recorded material 00:00:18]
Peter Reynolds: Hi, I'm Peter Reynolds and welcome to Mother Nature doesn't give a crap with Geoff Sheffrin. On this podcast, we've spoken a lot about the profound economic impacts of climate change. From agriculture and infrastructure to trade and tourism. Today, we're going to examine how the financial markets, along with government hold the power to making a lasting impact in the fight against this global crisis, from green bonds to climate focused investment funds, will delve into the intersection of economics, climate action, and the transformative potential of harnessing capital for a more sustainable future.
And joining me today is someone who has clearly invested time energy and more than a few gray hairs into this crisis. And that's climate activist and professional engineer, Geoff Sheffrin. Geoff, welcome back.
Geoff Sheffrin: Peter, thank you. I appreciate the introduction. Now, I'm a little bit nervous about being positioned as somebody who can put some financial expertise to this because I really can't, but I can certainly talk about it in broad strokes, because ultimately, we need a lot of money to fix this problem.
Peter Reynolds: Absolutely and as you and I have discussed in the past, when it comes to the climate crisis, we've tried to appeal to people's hearts, we've tried to appeal to people's brains. It doesn't seem to be working, maybe if we appeal to their wallets, that will be a solution.
Geoff Sheffrin: That's a good thought. I'm concerned, I think people are at the stage in their lives where there's more than enough economic turmoil in their day-to-day existence. If somebody starts pilfering into their wallet, in order to get the climate crisis fixed, I think we're going to get a fair bit of pushback. And that is, unfortunately, prospective disaster.
Peter Reynolds: No, absolutely. And that's a good segue. Before sort of jumping into the financial side of it, I did want to talk about this shift we're seeing from sort of climate denier to climate, it's not so bad, or, as I like to say, because it's very sort of, you know, it's unpopular. The second that you're labeled a climate denier, people just, you know, tune you out. But what you know, we're often seeing is this shift, particularly, I think, on the right wing, where they're sort of soft pedaling the climate crisis, to avoid some of the sort of what they consider radical changes in policy, you know, like carbon taxes, or, you know, banning gas vehicles or restrictions on carbon emissions.
And in my research, it's interesting, because you're seeing this, the sort of the rise of sort of populism versus the climate crisis. And very much to your point, Geoff, about how populist leaders are talking and saying, look at these elites trying to dip into your pocket to fix the climate crisis. And this sort of scare mongering and really going against science, but appealing to really people's wallets and saying, we can't put up with this.
Geoff Sheffrin: And, you know, my response to that would be, we are in a climate crisis. And there is no free lunch. Some way or another, we have to spend a global small fortune to get out of this problem. I've said before on previous podcast, my uneducated guess, is I agree regularly more than $80 trillion. And the only reason I've ever picked that number is because global GDP is around $86 trillion. And if we can rustle up 20 trillion for a Covid pandemic, when this gets serious enough, we might just figure out how to rustle up 80 trillion for a climate pandemic.
Peter Reynolds: But it's got to be tough, because you can imagine from a politician's point of view, particularly coming out of Covid, when the Economic Times are tough to say, well, we need to dip in a little bit more, or we need to close this plant or reduce, you know, mining in this area, which is going to cause a loss of jobs. These can be hard cells.
Geoff Sheffrin: But did we actually do that? You go back to Covid. And we really didn't dig into people's wallets per se. Right. There was a lot of it inconvenience, a lot of hardships, because of having to adapt to virtual working and a whole pile of lost jobs, et cetera. And the there was a significant cultural and social dynamic shift. But in terms of the individual person's wallet, it didn't come out of their wallet, it may have denied them income, because of those changes.
So you know, I see the thing slightly differently. If I go back to, you know, the early attendance on this, the amount of money we need is an astronomical amount. It's not going to be paid for by individuals. We've got to get into such a deep diet mess on the climate crisis, that governments collectively around the world are saying, we got to do something. And doing something means doing what they did for Covid. Printing orders of money and throwing orders of money at all of the green science-based leadership, scientific leadership solutions that are available.
Peter Reynolds: 100%. 100%. I think this is a good point to sort of talk about how those financial markets, we talked about the government just printing money, and you know, that money has to come from somewhere, ultimately, it's going to come from taxpayers and come from citizens. But in terms of how the financial markets can really help reduce carbon emissions in the in the short term, can you talk just a little bit about the kinds of investments that they can be making to really –
Geoff Sheffrin: I think there's a lot of that already going on. And we see a lot of that, in terms of business investments and businesses trying hard and sincerely to go green. There's no doubt that that's happening behind the scenes. If I look at many of the high-profile pension funds, particularly here in Canada, they are very much focused on more and more green investments. So you know, there's a strong push to make sure there was out there is green deliverable, and he's not greenwashing. But is sustainable contribution to improving the situation. The other thing, which I think is critical, sorry, go on. You had a comment.
Peter Reynolds: No, I was going to say that when you mentioned greenwashing, you know, this idea of some set of standards, right, all companies can and governments and financial institutions can follow so that we can tell whether or not what they're doing is green, or what they're doing is greenwashing. We need some sort of some sort of standard.
Geoff Sheffrin: Well, let me let me comment about that for a moment. Internationally, we have the international financials, let me get it right. Reporting Standards, right, there's the IFRS. So International Financial Reporting Standards. They have now been very nicely putting together a series of protocols referred to as the ISSB, right which is and we read that again, to get it right, International Sustainability Standards Board, right.
So, I think that is exactly the sort of thing we need, because the premise there, and Canada is getting into this, and is watching what's going on and trying to do their piece. And you know, this is very much a global initiative, and it has to be. And I think where I see them trying to go is, the way we have accounting standards for everything that goes on in a business, we're now looking to put together a structure similar to accounting standards, which talks about environmental standards. And that's what the ISSBP is getting towards.
And I think this is going to be a critical factor. Next year 2024, we will see much more of this developing and hopefully countries across the world will be picking it up. Hopefully, it'll come up at this year's GOP Summit, because it's a critical piece has come up before the goal. But I'm hoping it'll be a very key important leading point on the GOP agenda. Because it's back to earlier comments that I'd made and we've discussed, if you don't have metrics, and you don't have teeth, nothing happens. Not quite true, but you know what I mean?
Peter Reynolds: No, absolutely. The just telling people to do it out of the goodness of their heart does not go, it isn’t going to work, isn’t going to work. And I was happy to see that that Canada is that we've established our own Canadian sustainability standards board to sort of work with our international partners. And my understanding is as of 2024, sort of as of next year, companies are going to be required to include, you know, as part of their sort of standard filings, this idea of you know how sustainable their businesses are because people are going to invest particularly banks, it's all about the numbers, and –
Geoff Sheriffs: All about money.
Peter Reynolds: If they look at the numbers, and the numbers are vague, vague equals risk, risk equals, you know, fear and they're not going to be investing in those technologies. They're not going to be investing in those companies. So I think it's set of standards just helps everybody.
Geoff Sheffrin: Yes, I agree totally. I think that's a critical piece. And moving forward. What concerns me a little bit is, for the financial systems, we have all sorts of mechanism for keeping people on the up and up and keeping them honest, keeping them focused on a way of audit processes, and a variety of things. And one of the things we're pushing here in Ontario, through the engineers, is we want to see some sort of legislation, which says, the Way accountants have to manage audits and accounting analysis for various companies, we need the same thing on the climate crisis side.
We need an engineering audit process with certified professionals who are part of this review process in order to be able to at the end of it to nod their head sign off, say, yeah, it's been done. We need to get to that. And I think we're getting the infrastructure in place through the ISSB. But we also need to get to the monitoring and enforcement side of that equation.
Peter Reynolds: In terms of, of when a when a company is started, or when you build, you always have an environmental analysis before you build any major structure. And is the idea that we'd be sort of taking that concept and applying it to businesses that sort of already exist, and their processes, is that sort of the idea?
Geoff Sheffrin: Yes. Yeah. I think that's the sort of structure that has to emerge. I'm sure behind the scenes is happening. At the moment, I haven't come across enough of it, other than to say, I'm really pleased that the ISSB piece is moving forward. And it is clearly becoming a global initiative because I think Europe is quite a strong company, instigator of this, but other countries have gone on board fairly quickly, and Canada's also held their hand up, we're getting on board.
And I think this is absolutely critical. What worries me a little bit, is some of the slightly less developed countries, how soon will they get on board. And I'm not really talking about the African continent and so on, because they're not the big contributor of the climate problem. But I am talking about the Asian contingent, and the Far East contingents, they need to be in this group of everybody measuring the ISSB process.
Peter Reynolds: And was that not an issue at the last big conference where the third world countries in places that didn't have the resources, were asking for funds from the more developed countries, but they didn't get everything they wanted? So, I know, you know, this idea is we are we are all in this together, we have one planet, and you can't expect countries. That was one of the challenges. And we you and I've talked about this before, but you have the smaller countries who look to Europe that cut down all of its forests and was able to build up its economy at the cost of the planet. And suddenly when they're just getting their feet when it comes to mining or forestry and suddenly, daddy's looking over their shoulder going no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. OK, so you can see the reason why there would be resistance.
Geoff Sheffrin: Absolutely. And that it's, it's so perfectly understandable, they didn't cause the problem. And now we're asking you them to be denied the opportunity of their full scope of development, because it just adds to the problem. Well, that means us wealthier countries, got to dip our hands in our pockets, and make money available in a way that allows sustainability to be developed.
Peter Reynolds: I wanted to turn to some of the investments Canada has been making for sustainable energy, specifically. And so this idea of getting off coal, that being sort of the number one emitter of co2, the one thing we absolutely did to get off coal and Canada's, you know, been doing a good job. I mean, we only have nine coal fired power plants in Canada left, none in Ontario, and none in Quebec. And I think to myself, when I look at, for example, that they converted a coal fired plant to solar and that was the – now I have –
Geoff Sheffrin: [Unintelligible 00:15:01].
Peter Reynolds: That, to me is a great success story. It is taking an area, you're converting it to green energy, but you're also, you know, employing people. It seems like a big success story and something that can really be duplicated across the country and the world.
Geoff Sheffrin: Yeah, yeah, I would agree. But I think what it also flags was this, you know, ultimately, I think Nanticoke actually shut down on sometime early in the 2012, 2013 timeframe, and was starting to be demolished, you know, about 2019, 2020. So now, it must be earlier than that, but I think its final demolition occurred in 2019. And since then, they've cleared the site, and they put it in solar array.
One of the challenges, which is, I think, a little bit striking, I think, I don't have the numbers on the top of my head, but I think Nanticoke produced about four gigawatts of energy from coal, electrical energy from coal, and the you know, all we're getting from solar is, you know, probably only about 1% of that in terms of solar, because the solar land area to produce the equivalent amount of electricity is quite land intensive.
So, you know, we're getting, we're getting solar, and is on that site. But we're not getting anywhere near as much as the coal fired plant would have put out previously. And that also says something about, we've got so many green initiatives, and we absolutely should be investing these and building them and creating the infrastructure.
But you always have to watch where you put it. And you can't take something like Nanticoke made expanded, tenfold, 20-fold in order to increase the solar footprint. Because how much arable land are you consuming, and with floods and droughts, we need to be careful about making sure that we don't consume arable land in the quest for green power. So there's a constant push and shove, and a balancing act that we have to be very mindful of.
Peter Reynolds: Let me throw a common comment that I get. So when we talk about the space that wind and solar power needs, and people will say, Canada's a big country, why don't we just put all of those farms up north where there is no arable land where nobody is now and just transfer that power back into the big cities? What do you say to them?
Geoff Sheffrin: The answer is to a degree, yes. I don't want to kill the forest, because we're already doing enough of that with wildfires at an unprecedented level. And once you do that, where you can if you can find the spaces etc., there's no reason why you shouldn't be looking at that. But I need a robust, durable grid to bring power from north down here. And that doesn't exist at the moment because an awful lot of our northern communities still have to rely on diesel generators for power.
And if that's happening there, how the hell do I did electricity from up north down here when I put in wind farms on a solar array? The answer is yes, it's all possible. But once again, there's a balancing act involved.
Peter Reynolds: It was interesting an article I read about the Rosco wind farms in Texas, and they basically have these wind farms that are integrated with the current farming situation they have there. So the farmers are able to make some money from these turbines, and they farm them around them. So I thought that was a great sort of way of you know, we can do both, it just takes a little bit of creativity.
Geoff Sheffrin: I think, as a matter of fact, right here in Ontario, if you go north of Toronto, up to Shelburne, and you look around that area, there's quite a few wind farms around there fairly intensive ones. And they're sitting on arable land. And that's exactly what happens, you know, the farmers are able to farm around it, or they have livestock there or whatever there is an that is an option with wind. But it's not an option with solar, because solar needs solar geography. Wind just needs a post in the ground. And around that post, you can do a fair bit of work because the next post is quite a way away.
Peter Reynolds: And I know that we talked about the coal fired plant being converted into solar but are most being converted into gas plants. Is that sort of the claim about that?
Geoff Sheffrin: I don't know, I don't know. At the moment, you know, in Ontario, you know, we're fortunate because we have so much green where you know, about 93, 94% from nuclear and from hydroelectric. You know, so and we do have wind and solar in there, but it's a very small proportion of all of that. So, you know, there's about 6% or so and some peak loading beyond that 100% which is fired by gas here in the province. So I'm not sure I think, I don't know whether we have any converted coal plants that are move to gas, that's something I've been suggesting that they look at elsewhere in the world. But you know, for us here in Ontario, I've not done any research on that. So I don't really know whether that's happening, or it's been available.
Peter Reynolds: Let's talk about you touched on nuclear, and the idea that nuclear has to be part of the conversation. Can you talk about some of the investments we've been making a nuclear both, I guess, in Canada, and specifically Ontario?
Geoff Sheffrin: Well, let me start with the Ontario piece. And many of you will have seen in the papers particular, if you're local, here within Canada, that the Ontario Provincial Government has really stepped up, you know, we're putting we had one SMR, small modular reactor being is in progress at the moment up at Darlington. They're adding three more, which is just terrific. And you know, maybe there'll be their feeding into the grid, maybe they'll take them and put them elsewhere in the country. If you have some SMR is up north, you know, you've got power generation, in places that currently don't have good power access.
And then you look at the other announcements they've made is about pushing OPG and Bruce Power to start planning for a large nuclear there, that tour is not going to be very popular with people in Greenpeace and so on. But nuclear, we have no choice. We've got to use every scientific tool for generating green power that is at our disposal. And in that context, a large scale nuclear is an essential piece. And then the other thing reverse happened. Sorry, did you want to jump in?
Peter Reynolds: No, to that point, it was interesting, because so all these things you learn, particularly on the financial side, this investment you were talking about the Canada's Infrastructure Bank, the CIB invested a billion dollars in in this in this Darlington project. I mean, I've never even heard of the CIB. The fact that you know that there are after a while, yeah. And I never knew, but that they focus on infrastructure projects, and this idea of committing into something that isn't happening right away, because I don't think that SMR Darlington's have is going to be online until 2028.
Geoff Sheffrin: Something like that, yes. Another few years, yeah, but it's underway. Yeah.
Peter Reynolds: Is it underway fast enough, though, Geoff, you know, are we moving fast enough?
Geoff Sheffrin: That’s always the case, isn't it? I think the point is, I think they've gone through all the regulatory hurdles. And if you remember, we had David up on one of our podcasts, two or three episodes back, where he is the project lead from OBG down on that project at Darlington. And, you know, he was giving us a little bit of insight on that. So, the answer is, yes, that was moving forward. But then there are there's another couple of good news pieces, you know, that Ontario Provincial announced also, that they're looking to significantly invest in the grid infrastructure for his durability, for it to be cyber proof, and to be to be expandable up north, etc.
So, you know, there's a lot happening. The federal government unusually, has also chipped in, because when it comes to things like power, there's a provincial jurisdictions. But the federal government has chipped in some money because it's a, it's a Canadian necessity. So if Ontario gets this piece together, and we started cross feeding between Quebec, and Manitoba, we're starting to enhance the national grid capability. All of these things are important for the future.
Peter Reynolds: And the investment we're making in this technology is also something that can be exported to other countries.
Geoff Sheffrin: Correct. And I think one of the last things, which is extremely interesting, which got a little bit of press, but not a lot, is that you know, there has been a large-scale nuclear refurbishing at Darlington, which was on time and on budget.
Peter Reynolds: That sounds like a fantasy Geoff, the on time, on budget.
Geoff Sheffrin: It does but it's absolutely, that's one I looked at, and it's absolutely true. And the other thing, which I rather I, again, credit the Ontario Provincial Government poor is in Pickering. We have this issue with that is the earliest of our nuclear generators is the old technology of CANDU, one of the original technologies, and it is not so easily upgraded, as will be Bruce Power, who's going through an upgrade at the moment or as Darlington would be.
So, the issue is that the province has asked for the reports, which I think date back to about 2005, 2006, which at that time said, not too feasible. They've been asked to look at it again. Because you know, we've moved on 15 years, technology has improved. Is there anything we can do to get that up and running and find ways of extending Pickering beyond its current shelf life? So there's just in Ontario, there's just a shopping list of positives, which I'm really excited about.
And as you were pointing out, a number of these are Sustainable investments which we can export in terms of knowledge, expertise. And if we're making SMRs, new then maybe the Hitachi design, that's fine. You know, there are several designs out there. But if we're making it and we become a key player, as we did originally with CANDU reactors, that's just great for the economy.
Peter Reynolds: Absolutely, absolutely. So to combine to the two topics, in terms of, you know, how capital markets and investment is critical to the climate crisis, and also getting ourselves off coal. I think both of those subjects can be summed up and talked about when we talk about China. And this idea –
Geoff Sheffrin: We’re getting started on that one, sorry.
Peter Reynolds: Well, it's fascinating, because just a little bit of research, you know, this idea of China accounts for 50% of the world, a coal electricity production. As of 2022, they had 1118 coal plants in mainland China. And yet, they invested $546 billion in clean energy, wind, solar, and electric vehicles, nearly four times the amount of the US. So, on the one hand, they're making these huge investments. And on the other hand, they can't seem to get off coal. It seems like it doesn't seem to make any sense.
Geoff Sheffrin: No, it doesn't. And I sort of scratch my head at that. And I'm thinking to myself, as far as I've been able to read, they have recently approved or have plan for over 100 additional coal fired plants, of which a number of them already under construction. And I'm thinking to myself, if there's one thing we have to find a way of getting out of, coal is absolutely the number one. And yet, we're just making the situation worse, and the Kerry visit, John Kerry, the economic climate czar from the US, his visit was really, in my opinion, a bit of a bust and not his fault.
I mean, China is saying we're doing what we're doing. And as Kerry had said, at the end of his visit, he said, I'm keeping the doors open for dialogue, right. And that's all we've been able to accomplish. But China said, we're on net zero 2070. I'm rolling my eyes saying Net Zero 2070. I think we'll have wiped out about two to 3 billion people by then. But that's just the way we are as a species, we just love to well, it isn’t in my backyard. Let's just get on with it.
Peter Reynolds: Well, that was interesting article talking about, you know, will China ever get off coal. And one of the points they are making is it's sort of historically and culturally, coal is very, you know, it's something that's very safe in terms of not necessarily the environment, but in terms of the economy, in terms for power generation, because they've had drought, huge droughts that have knocked out their hydroelectric and coal has sort of always been there.
So, it's very scary, politically and economically for them to consider phasing that out entirely. But hopefully, as you know, we're seeing more investment in in green initiatives, it will start to replace the coal, but it seems like we have a long way to go with China. And some of these other countries.
Geoff Sheffrin: We do. And I think one of the hidden facts with coal as we've mentioned in one of the previous podcasts, when we were talking about this, is the death rate from coal is the highest amongst all the generating sources we've got. If you look at solar, wind, nuclear and hydroelectric, they are all down at the minimal level. I mean, the death rate is barely about four people every decade or two, it's a very low number. Whereas if you go up the hierarchy in terms of natural gas, which is about 200 times the death rate, you go up to oil, which is even higher, you go up to coal, it's about 800 times the death rate, but it doesn't get reported. Why? Because it's in the atmosphere. We're killing people [unintelligible 00:29:22], and because we're doing it every day, it just doesn't get, it doesn't go anywhere. Nobody talks about it. But it's you know, it's an absolute disaster behind the scenes.
Peter Reynolds: I think a good place up to you, Geoff to sort of maybe end the podcast and is to have a few more good news stories. To quote a comment that was made about the podcast on social media. You must be really fun at parties. I think we could we focus on the reality, which is often can be very dire, but there's some good stuff happening out there, and I'd love to get your thoughts on it. One is this idea of the deforestation in the Amazon has decreased by 34% in the first six months of this year. Yeah. And you talk about this idea of, you know, we need the money, we need the technology, and we need the political will. And it looks like in Brazil, they've got the political will.
Geoff Sheffrin: Yes, that's absolutely the sort of thing we need. I mean, we've said before on the podcast, we need three things. We need leadership. We need money and we need technology. We have all the technology. Is it as well developed as we want across the world? No. Can we do more years? Can we use it to make our world sustainable? Yes. Can we get money? Well, Seth Klein's book on the good war shows that we can generate money. The Covid crisis shows we can generate money if the crisis is bad enough, right. The point is leadership. And I've come back to this before in an earlier podcast, we have all the scientific leadership, we have the technical skills, the engineering skills, and I'm always waving my hand saying, engineers, you are the key resource, science is backing you up. Let's go make this happen. The big fly in the ointment is global political leadership. We don't have, we have it in some places, but just nowhere near enough to get us out of this problem in a hurry.
Peter Reynolds: Well, it's good to see that and hopefully it will be an example, you know, for other places and other countries to just kind of take up the cause. Yeah, on the second story, yeah, the so the second story is carbon capturing concrete. This is really interesting. So the Montreal company, carbon Crete, has developed a revolutionary method for sequestering carbon in concrete, making its product carbon negative. And I thought, you know, and to get a little technical, it says instead of using calcium-based cement, which contributes significantly to co2 emissions, carbon Crete uses waste slag from the steel industry, and carbon captured from industrial plants to create its concrete. And I thought, what an incredible innovation, exactly what you're talking about, about engineers stepping up.
Geoff Sheffrin: Yeah, exactly. Right. And this to me is a delightful piece of information, a good piece of news. And yes, it's happened. And, you know, the two big infrastructure of fabricating materials, we've got the crane tribute, a lot of co2, one is concrete, the other is steel. I took both of those from their processes. And there's a company trying to make the concrete piece Green, and all credits for them, that is going to be essential, critically useful. And there's work going on behind the scenes in the steel industry, they're finding more and more creative ways to avoid the carbon dioxide footprint from steelmaking. Right.
So, many companies are working on finding out how do we reduce that how we do how do we make that a net zero in our favor, so we don't have that carbon footprint. So you know, there's a lot of great work going on behind the scenes. And, you know, this company module was just one of them. This is just a riff.
Peter Reynolds: And the third story is potty trained cows. And this is very interesting. So, in [unintelligible 00:33:38], Germany, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Scientists from the University of Auckland and the research institute for Farm Animal Biology have come up with a surprising solution to combat manmade climate change. The researchers potty trained 16 Cows using a reward system, and 80% of the cows successfully used the designated toilet for urination. And the idea being that urination releases methane and ammonia which is harmful to the atmosphere in the environment. And by collecting it in special latrines, they're essentially able to process it and reduce significantly the release of methane and ammonia. Who would’ve thought, who would have thought it?
Geoff Sheffrin: Well, I mean, if it's a well-known fact that that our taste for, our carnivorous taste for meats, etc., and cows and lambs, sheep, etc. They are a significant contributor to the whole of the process, you know, including the fact that we get milk from cows. But here's some very sensible piece of work looking at how do we minimize this because methane is you know, I believe it's the second highest about climate change pollutants. High carbon dioxide is much higher, but methane is the next one down. So you know, finding ways of mitigating that is extremely useful.
And you may have noticed, several podcasts back, I kept railing against mitigation and adaption. But you know, we have no choice. We've got to mitigate; we've got to adapt. And if we can find a way of getting off coal quickly, then I think we have a chance of getting to net zero. And if we can ever get to net zero, then we got to figure out how to get down to 00 to reverse the 420 parts per million of co2 in the atmosphere and get it back down to 250. That's what we have to do.
Peter Reynolds: Well, I think this has been another fantastic conversation, Geoff, really, really appreciate your time., I think, you know, we really learned that the financial sectors role in this climate, the fight against climate change really can't be overstated. And investment in in green energy forms, you know, including nuclear is really imperative to the climate crisis.
Geoff Sheffrin: It absolutely is. And there is a lot of good stuff happening behind the scenes. The trouble is, the good stuff at the moment has not yet got to the point where globally, it overshadows and outweighs the bad stuff. Because we still have too much of the wrong things happening and we're just not moving quickly enough on all of them. We know what we need to do. We know how to do it. We can find ways of making the money happen. But really, we need you know, we need committed global leadership.
And my fear is, that won't happen until mother nature puts a larger nail in her two by four and beats us over the head harder. It's happening now. Why do we have a heat waves? We've got all these wildfires. The El Ninos is coming up for that it's happening now. It's going to make a disaster out of this winter next year. This is going to be biting us. Unfortunately, the only way we as a species adapt and moderate and fix problems, is when the beating is too hard.
And my opinion is, people have to get you know, it's back to my comment about digging, there are doers and movers and shakers. An awful lot of people sit on the couch. But my view is in the you got to get out there, you got to be a mover, you've got to find ways of making your own even its small contribution, you got to get out there and make your contribution as best you can.
Peter Reynolds: Geoff, thanks again for your time and insights.
Geoff Sheffrin: And thank you for your leadership cooperation. I love it. Thanks, Peter.
Peter Reynolds: And thank you, of course to our audience. We absolutely appreciate your support. It's amazing and keep those comments coming. We absolutely love to hear from you and get your suggestions and what you think of the climate crisis and what we can do to help get us out of this absolute catastrophe that we're moving towards quicker than we should.
And of course, you can listen to us wherever you get your podcasts, or you can watch us on YouTube. If you love to see both Geoff and my smiling faces. You can see us on YouTube as well. I don't know if that's a positive or negative. But we would love to see you. And so for Geoff Sheffrin and myself, Peter Reynolds, thank you so much. You've been watching or listening to Mother Nature doesn't give a crap. And until next time, we'll see you soon. Bye. Bye.
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