London Surrounded By Wildfire

SPEAKER_04 0:00

For the first time in its history, our capital city, which has been bombed, burnt with the great fire of London, has never been encircled by giant fires. I mean, one of the firemen I interview interviewed said he looked up from his crisis of dealing with the this fire in this village. And yes, all around on the horizon, columns of black smoke rising. How would Samuel Peeps have written it up, do you think? Well, that would have been interesting.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Yeah, and welcome to the Electric and Eclectic Podcast Show with Roger Atkins and some truly super smart and amazingly interesting guests.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

I've had a unique position for nearly 20 years as a witness for the BBC to the greatest challenge of our time. It's a job that's taken me to the farthest corners of the world.

SPEAKER_05 0:47

So today we're joined by David Schuckman, legendary science editor of BBC News, to talk about his new book, The Response.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

Meeting David Shukman At The BBC

SPEAKER_05 1:02

Well, here we are at BBC TV Centre. You've been here a few times, haven't you, David?

SPEAKER_04 1:07

I spent a good chunk of my life here in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, and I haven't been back for 12, 13 years. And it's like stepping onto another planet, actually. It's it's triggering memories.

SPEAKER_05 1:23

Well, I'm pleased. But I'm also disorientating. Yeah, well, look, I'm I'm pleased it's it's doing all of that because this is a a real, genuinely an honor for me. I I've always aspired to be, you know, a reasonable writer, better writer all the time. Never became an actual journalist, as indeed you are. Um and and just for you know, before we talk about this wonderful book, uh, the response, which I've read, you kindly sent me an advanced copy, and I appreciate that. Um, we share a number of things. We share a passion for tackling climate change. Let's start at the very top, if you like, of the pecking order. Um, we share uh well, we're both 67 at the moment, although I think you slash Let's not dwell on that. No, we don't dwell on that. Okay, that's good. Okay. But you know, this career that you've had is extraordinary. I know you joined the BBC, you're in Coventry initially. Joined the BBC in 1983, you were there for decades, you finished being the science editor. I think that was a first-time post-creation.

SPEAKER_04 2:22

Yeah, they created the post, and I was lucky enough to get it in 2012. So I had it for the best part of a decade.

The Frontline Club And Risky Reporting

SPEAKER_05 2:30

Wow. Yeah, and and and obviously during that time, so much happened, so many things occurred. You've traveled all around the world. You're a voice, you're a face, your style is something I'm certainly incredibly familiar with. That's why it's slightly weird sat next to you hearing you talk to me when normally you're through a screen. Yeah, I'm not often. I'm not often interviewed, actually. So this is a novel experience for me, too. Yeah, but I mean I'm I made my notes. Environments and science correspondent from 2003, as you say, science editor. You've written half a dozen books. Um, but this is this is the and member, oh, by the way, member of the frontline club. Yeah I'm not a journalist, but so I'm really intrigued by that that that club and what it is. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_04 3:15

Well, we can we can get into that. There was a bunch of a bunch of ex-military people who bought themselves cameras, learned how to use them, and took themselves off to front lines. Right. And they gathered astonishing footage at great personal risk to themselves. Wow. And one of them, Vaughan Smith, had the idea of setting up a club.

SPEAKER_05 3:36

Well, when was it when did they do that?

SPEAKER_04 3:38

Well, they must have been about 20 years or so, or even longer ago.

SPEAKER_05 3:41

Right.

SPEAKER_04 3:41

But I mean, during, for example, uh the wars in Afghanistan, that they were there getting frontline footage during the first Gulf War. Yeah. And they knew how to bend the rules and they took these risks, and they got astonishing material. I sometimes had the privilege, here in television centre, as it was, editing, doing voicing reports with their footage, and thinking this is just way, way better than anything we've ever got from any other source. So, yeah, that's the frontline club near Paddington. And it's a kind of watering hole for journalists. Yes, yeah.

What The Response Tries To Prove

SPEAKER_05 4:20

Not for the likes of me, then. No, no, no. No, that's true. We can get you in if you like. Oh man, no, seriously, I do have that kind of that that thing, that slight complex about people in your profession. Um, but but I I don't mind that because I think that gives you this sense of, well, it gives me that sense of aspiration. I always like like reading great writing, reflecting on why did I enjoy reading that? What could I learn from that? You know, what's the structure, what's the pace, but in my own sort of fashion. So, but anyway, we're not here to talk about me. Let's talk about this. The response is interesting, though that is. Well, maybe, maybe not. Um, a story of fire and flood in Britain's new world of extremes, heat, fire, flood. I'm just going to read what's on the back just for a moment. The fabric of national life we all depend on isn't nearly as robust as it might seem. Climate disasters are already happening on our doorstep. By unpicking the threads of the increasing number of climate-related tragedies, we reveal the most terrible thing of all. We could have been prepared, but we weren't. We could have developed to the early signs, the early warning signs, responded to them, but we didn't. So, yeah, I'd like to go through and get into the book. I've made some notes in here, and I'd like to start with something that appears quite early on in the book. Um, it's a quote you referenced from Dominic Rabb. People should be. Who was then Deputy Prime Minister? Yeah. Who was Deputy Prime Minister who said of the fact that we were about to come into an excessive period of heat? 40 degrees. Yes, astonishing. People should be resilient to the pressures. Um, that kind of notion of, I suppose it's the keep, calm, and carry on thing. Yeah. You know, the we know better, we know best. Extraordinary. That lurked you, didn't it?

SPEAKER_04 6:16

Well, it did actually, you're quite right to identify that as something that really got my goat because literally a few days before he said that, yeah, the Met Office, for the first time in its history, had issued a new kind of red extreme heat warning saying we're pretty certain that a great tract of England is going to hit 40 degrees.

unknown 6:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:39

Which is just that's new. That's record. That's a big jump from the previous record. Right. And um with that, they warned would come a whole host of implications, some of them really, really bad. Yes. And as it turns out, they were right.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:52

So that fed into government planning, mobilizing the hospitals, getting the fire brigades all ready, all the rest of it. And then, literally a day or two before the 40-degree day, the deputy prime minister on Sky News says, Well, I think people should enjoy the sunshine and just, you know, be resilient to what that temperature brings. And I think, okay, you're actually undermining the very public institutions that have gone through all the work to warn people and to try to save lives. That's the bit that really got me. I think this is actually about how to avoid people dying who might otherwise be saved. And you really want the whole of government to be doing that on the same page.

SPEAKER_05 7:35

Yeah, indeed you do. Well, again, through the book, you you recount various comments, uh situations, events, and people. Uh, lovely to see you talk with Quentin Wilson. Um, because I get did you know him at the beginning of the state?

SPEAKER_04 7:49

I didn't, but I knew him well as a presenter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:53

I mean, just off-screen.

SPEAKER_04 7:54

Yeah. And I always liked his style. And then he'd gone, I'd seen, I'd never met him. He went through this conversion to being pro-electric car. I did, yes. And I I loved that he made that transition from banging on about fair fuel prices to being fair about EVs.

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:10

And I thought that that's a great uh example of someone kind of seeing the light about something. So I we had a great interview, it was just online. I never met him in person, and was really upset to see that he died way before his time.

SPEAKER_05 8:23

Indeed. You know, we lost him last year, uh, and uh but his work and many of the things he's championed resonates and and is emerging as you know coming to fruition. So, you know, people often talk about people who aren't here anymore and legacy. I think it's clearly defined what Quentin's legacy is going to be, and it's a very strong and and and good one.

The 40°C Warning And Mixed Messages

SPEAKER_04 8:43

Yeah, I think it's this thing of pushing back against this tsunami of propaganda, basically a lot of falsehoods, about electric cars, you step in it and it's gonna catch fire. Yes. It won't get you more than 10 miles, it'll make you vote Labour, make all your hair fall up. You know, the Chinese are gonna spy on you as if you don't carry a Chinese-made mobile phone in your pocket. I mean, you know, a whole load of stuff. And of course, it's all about trying to preserve the vested interests of the traditional car makers in hop to the oil industry. Well, and and I think he did a great job pushing back on all of that.

SPEAKER_05 9:21

Oh, uh absolutely. There was that moment where he did a piece to camera as he just reviewed, I think, the GME V1, and he said the days of the combustion engine are numbered. Okay, that was back in the 90s. He didn't mean next week, he didn't mean next year. You know, we measure things certainly in terms of industry. Of course we did we do and should in decades. You know, so it it will evolve and change over decades, but change it will. And Quentin was, you know, ahead of the game.

SPEAKER_04 9:49

And you you could argue that right now, actually, there's an acceleration of change. I mean, what's so fascinating? I've I've gone back a bit into the early history of the motor car. You know, when you know you had this established industry of the horse and carriage. That's how everything got around. Yep. And then along comes the motor car. And for several decades, they're around, but they're toys for really rich people, they're perhaps not very reliable. Then Henry Ford comes along and produces the Model T and goes on the market and he immediately cuts the price to the annoyance of his partners and his investors, and then he cuts the price again, all the time reaching huge new demographics. So people are suddenly thinking oh, yeah, I can afford that. And you go in the space of a decade from being from having a situation where the motor car is quite a rarity to actually them being them being everywhere.

SPEAKER_05 10:46

Excuse me. Sorry about the cough. Yeah, exactly. And ironically, what you chronicle there is that George Bernard Shaw thing about, you know, all progress relies on the unreasonable man. Um and then we saw it again with Elon Musk, arguably. You know, in terms of the Western ambition and trigger point for EV, is Elon Musk.

SPEAKER_04 11:12

Yeah, and you see, I mean, I tell you this, I interviewed him about 20 years ago, mainly about rockets. We went to his uh rocket factory in in California, and it took us ages to get the interview. This was before he was globally known. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, and we we wandered around his factory, and I understood some of what he was saying. And I say that because back in those days, he wasn't used to the media. He spoke at incredible speed, and he mumbled quite a lot. You know, he was a he was a he was a self-confessed nerd. Fascinated by technicalities and science, and and but he had this vision. He had this vision for solar power, for uh electric cars, and and and that climate change was a threat that needed to be answered.

SPEAKER_05 11:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 11:59

And uh he had this line where he said um it's mankind's destiny to be a multiplanetary species. Now, when he first said that, I thought, sorry, what do you mean?

SPEAKER_05 12:11

Sounds like science fiction.

SPEAKER_04 12:12

What wouldn't you talk about? But actually, that was his abiding passion that you know perhaps things are gonna get so bad on Earth, we've got to live on other planets.

SPEAKER_05 12:19

Well, that's a nice segue into then the principle of the book. We're talking here about climate change, and one thought I had in my mind having read it is is there a danger, do you think, that if we, as you suggest, instigate a lot of um better preparedness, uh better um ways in which we can be ready for these heat waves, floods, etc., that if we do that, it's almost like accepting that climate change is happening, so let's just deal with the the consequences. Does it take, pardon my turn of phrase, the heat off, focusing on the core?

EV Backlash Myths And Industry Spin

SPEAKER_04 13:00

Look, for a really long time, if you were a climate scientist or activist or anyone concerned about climate change. The target was to get off fossil fuels. Right. Because they're the cause of the trouble. If you said, look, we've got to adapt ourselves to hotter conditions, if we've got to somehow accustom ourselves to these new this new situation, it looks a little bit like defeatism that you're saying, well, we're failing to turn off the fossil fuel tap, so we've just got to get on with this thing. Now, I understand that, that for a long time it was seen as a distraction from the prime task of turning off the fossil fuel tap. But now we find ourselves in a situation where this stuff is real. It's present tense, it's not about the future. When I started reporting on this as yeah, 20 years ago, a lot of things were about dangers in the future. What we're learning now in the last few years is that actually, even with a relatively modest rise in global average temperature, we're getting wild stuff, very dangerous stuff. We're getting things that didn't happen before. You know, wildfires in London suburbs burning dozens of houses. Really? Yeah. Um, people nearly drowning in basements just because it rains shocking heavenly.

SPEAKER_05 14:23

In North London, you know.

SPEAKER_04 14:24

Well, that's just not not that far from here. I interviewed a guy, elderly guy, who was in his basement, just watching telly, suddenly notices water rising. Not nice water than that. It's a mix of water and sewage. And basically that day in July 2021, five times more rain fell in an instant than the sewage network could handle. So the the sewers and drains were overflowing, and the stuff was blasting back up, and he was up to his waist, up to his chest. He he tried to get to his front door, but but he couldn't open it. There was a window at the front, he he couldn't get out of that because water was pouring in. He went to his bedroom, the garden door. The water level he could see was higher outside than in. It's like a horror film. He he rang his sister as a last act to say goodbye. I love you. He thought he was going to go under. He said he was arms out like Jesus, holding his phone. And and then he heard these shouts, and a couple from a flat upstairs must have realized that he was in trouble. Right. He didn't really know them at all. But they must have clocked. Oh, yeah, that old guy down in the basement. Let's go and help him. And at that point, I think the incoming tide must have just slowed down enough for them to urge him to get to hop across some furniture, to get to the door, the window at the front, and to to somehow squeeze his way through. And the the couple uh were able to grab him and hoike him out. And you know the bit that shocks me, there's an uh a guy who nearly drowned in one of the wealthiest cities on the planet just because it rained. And it struck me then that hang on, surely we can do better than that. And we know from New York, in the same year, a couple of months later, September 21. It was a young family, wasn't it? Uh well, yeah, there were some. Yeah, yeah, 11 people drowned in Queens, in New York. Just because it rained. Now they couldn't get out. I think surely we can do better than this. And we're gonna get more of this. And that that's the bit that scares me.

SPEAKER_05 16:35

Well, it it scared me reading the book. I sort of got I felt quite upset because you always think of when you hear these incidents, you think of people you know who kind of live in a similar place. What could happen to them.

SPEAKER_04 16:45

Well, I mean, there are like 50,000, 60,000 apartments in basements in London alone.

SPEAKER_05 16:50

Yes, and and that's your point. So you're you're talking of an individual, a specific case, but you know, and whether at the time it was the few, the potential for it to be the many is absolutely knocking on our door.

SPEAKER_04 17:02

Well, and a a friendly official guided me on the internet to a document that I never would have found on my own. It's not secret, but it's very hard to find. Right. It's the official reasonable worst-case scenario, that's the Whitehall phrase. Yes. Reasonable worst-case scenario for flash flooding or surface water flooding in London. Right. And it you go through this thing, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:27

And a real- Because you obviously lived in London yourself for a long time.

Adaptation No Longer Looks Optional

SPEAKER_04 17:30

Because because it says you could get a mega downpour, convective storm, uh, too much for the drainage and sewage system to handle. And and it says in black and white in this official report, likelihood of over 40 fatalities. So in officialdom, they are thinking, and this was drafted some years ago now, it's probably a higher number since then. And you think, okay, in official minds, this is a real possibility. And that that's the bit that really gets me, because you think there are people who are not sort of necessarily in secret, but discreetly doing these studies about how many people could die through these extreme worsening extremes of weather. And then you think, well, why aren't why is no one talking about this?

SPEAKER_05 18:20

Well, so I hope to bring that out in the Well, that's exactly what you've done. And and and it is this, you know, I suppose planning for the worst, hoping for the best. But I think that comes down to the core of the issue, as I felt when I'm reading the book, which was okay, the principle, plan for the worst and hope for the best costs money. So, where does the kind of financial imperative come in regard to, you know, yeah, prevention's always better than cure? Fine as a principle. What does that mean when you apply it in terms of costs? Some of the preventative things. Because, you know, jumping around a little bit in it, but for example, when it comes to water companies, um, and I don't know if you saw the Channel 4 dirty business uh series. I I've seen some clips of it, actually. I haven't watched the whole thing. Three-part series. My son who's in marketing, Nathaniel, he he he was involved with with his agency and and and the channel four program. Really quite shocking. And the moment I got to the point in your book, which obviously you you wrote last year, because this was a documentary that came out in January, it was about all the things that happen because they focus on profitability, not on not on other things, enough of other things. So money becomes the thing that gets in the way. Yeah, it's uh it's really fascinating. Tell tell us about then when the fire brigade tried to put fire out and they couldn't get the pressure. And just go through that, what you investigated and found the origin of that reason, which was I thought really shocking.

A London Basement Flood Horror Story

SPEAKER_04 19:46

July the 19th, 2022, 40 degrees, and dozens of major wildfires erupted in a great ring around London. And too many for the London Fire Brigade to cope with. I've been through the log. At each of these incidents, you've got the incident commander screaming to control, send me more fire engines, send me more crews, I need more of this, I need more of that. And the reply from control, more often than not, is well, you're on your own. You know, we've sent you one, we've sent you five, get on with it. The worst fire was in a place called Wennington, a little village on the eastern edge of London, and there 18 houses were burnt to the ground because the fields around Courtfire. I remember watching it on television. Well, it was live on television, quite unbelievable. It's the kind of thing you think, okay, that happens in California, happens in Greece, Portugal, Australia, London, drizzly London. You see, it happened. And um I went through the log and I did some a freedom of information request as well to learn more. The first crew that arrived, pretty quickly after the fire was called, reported to control weak water pressure. So control then contacts the water company, which is privatized, and they said, Oh, yeah, we're conducting some tests. Right? Okay, yeah. Well, I FOI'd the water company and found that they restored the water pressure at seven o'clock that evening. Right? So the fire started at one, water pressure restored at six. So for the best part of the afternoon, when the fire was sorry, at seven, for six hours, the the water pressure was inadequate for firefighting. Now, it seems to me, so I then dug into this, my wife worried I was going down a rabbit hole, but it really obsessed me because you need to go down a rabbit hole. If your house is burning down or about to burn down, and the fire brigade are there, but don't have enough water to save your house, how angry would you be? So I I follow all this. This rabbit hole. And I found something which I didn't know. So I stuck it in the book. When the privatization of the water industry happened, there was a legal obligation on those companies to provide a minimum flow rate. To households. There was nothing about firefighting. And there's a it was a kind of loose memorandum of understanding and aspir aspiration, or we'll work together, blah, blah, blah. Bullshit then basically. Well, it is bullshit because then when I FOI'd the London Fire Brigade about all this, they said, yeah, yeah, we've we we urgently contacted all the London, all the fire, all the water companies in the London area to remind them that we need water, we need better communication, we don't want any nonsense about tests on a day when London's on fire. I mean, for the first time in its history, our capital city, which has been bombed, burnt with the Great Fire of London, has never been encircled by giant fires. I mean, one of the firemen I interviewed said he looked up from his crisis of dealing with the this fire in this village. And yes, all around on the horizon, columns of black smoke writing. How would Samuel Peeps have written it up, do you think? Well, that would have been interesting. Yeah, it would, wouldn't it? Because he would he would have wanted to know, because of course he was interested in causes and effects of the human story. Well, that's all of that there.

SPEAKER_05 23:12

It is. Now, a couple of things. I want to go through a few more things. No, because I I want to watch our time and make sure we get it all in. There was a moment in your book you talk about the CEO then of BP, John Brown, who came in and really changed the landscape in terms of the oil industry by saying climate change is real, they need to do something about it, and they're actually going to change the name of the company to Beyond Petroleum. And um, so BP, Beyond Petroleum. Isn't it ironic now that the place where we're truly going beyond petroleum is then the CCP, the Communist Party of China. You know, that the CCP is BP now. Um, not there yet, still make coal-fired plants. We all know that. But when you look at the trajectory, the line of travel, it's massively about they want to get off being dependent on oil imports and also on cleaner air. Well, indeed, because I know the impetus for clean air is at the heart of how the electric vehicle thing began. Why do I know that? Um, it's not just supposition. Um, the guy who was employee number two at CATL, uh Bob Gallion, an American who worked with Robin Zheng, the reason why they were given some open doors into progressing quickly with batteries and electric vehicles is because the government in China were freaking out about air quality. Well, yeah, because they had this amazing middle class insurrection.

SPEAKER_04 24:37

A lot of people were lifting themselves out of poverty with the great Chinese industrialization and economic growth. Even found their kids had asthma and you couldn't go into the street.

SPEAKER_05 24:47

It's the law of unintended consequence and uh writ large. So, yes, so I think the impetus in China is three things, whilst we're quickly on that. Air quality, um, energy security, and to usurp and then dominate the established global automotive and energy industries. There's no doubt to become the world's first electrostate. Yes, not a petrostate. I I like the way you've dropped that term in. Because it's not familiar to a lot of people. Electrostate. Petrostates have been the fabric and the structure of the 20th century and the first quarter of the 21st century. Sure. The rest of this century, it looks very much like it's going to be progressively dominated by petrostates and all that that means. So, yeah, going back to that sort of bombshell speech, if you like, that that that John Brown delivered, and then, as I understand it, there's a bit in your book, but I don't think it goes into detail. Something happened in his personal life and he had to resign. Yeah, there was a if he hadn't resigned, if he was still there, if he carried on.

SPEAKER_04 25:51

It's a great question because he, you know, he he came in, he gave a very celebrated speech saying, as an oil boss, the first oil boss, yeah, we've got to take climate change seriously. And we've got to invest in alternatives. And he he highlighted solar. And then came, yeah, the beyond petroleum catch line. Yes. And he immediately faced opposition internally. Because there's an institution with a very proud history of extracting oil and flogging it.

SPEAKER_05 26:22

And is it a proud history? Sorry, just for a moment.

Firefighting With Weak Water Pressure

SPEAKER_04 26:24

Well, if you go back to 1953. Well, that's not a proud episode. But just explain what. Well, yeah, so so I mean, it it's a BP is a is a hist is a BP is a hist okay, let me start that again. BP is a company with a very kind of special position in British life. Partly because it's always paid generous dividends, partly because it's been a flag carrier for the UK, and partly because it's had this role of providing an absolutely vital service for decades for the national economy. And its great crown jewel was Iran, Persia. It got control of Persian oil. In fact, it was the Anglo-Persian oil company. And there's a reference to that on the old headquarters, Britannia House, um, a statue of what's called a Persian scarf dancer. I mean, this was a nod to that heritage. And it was very, very imperial. It was, it was a real force in the land, and politicians had to cout out of it. And um then there was an election in 1950. A democratic election. Democratic election that brought to power a prime minister who felt, as many of his country folk did, affronted by the fact that this foreign oil company was basically taking their oil and paying not much in the way of royalties for the rights to do.

SPEAKER_05 27:56

As we would in this country. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

Can you imagine? Yeah. Exxon turns up and starts siphoning everything out and paying a miserable pittance to the exchequer. So uh he nationalized the oil. Well, BP and Her Majesty's government couldn't tolerate that. And in cahoots with the CIA, MI6 basically staged a coup, got rid of this bloke, installed someone more pliable, whose first act was to restore BP to its position of premium. The sharp shark. Yeah, exactly. So you you you have right at the core. So when when people, as they rightly do, say there's a thread with the fossil fuel industry that that connects state violence, um, a kind of pretty aggressive form of colonialism, in effect. Yes. Uh, and obviously war. And we're we're seeing this time and again. We need the oil, we don't, we don't care how we get it.

SPEAKER_05 28:55

Yeah, yeah. Well, that story, I mean, ironic, doesn't really do it justice because it it's consequential to everybody's life now.

SPEAKER_04 29:04

Well, it leads to a great quote that that that John Simpson, my old colleague from the BBC, and we worked together in this building for many, many happy years. I've read a few of his books. Okay, well, he's got this one where he quotes an Iranian old Persian proverb. Yes. If you're walking along a path and you trip on a pebble, you can be sure it was put there by someone British. Right? You know, there's this deep distrust, obviously, of the Americans, but also of the Brits as well. So what we're seeing now, to understand it, you've got to know that history.

SPEAKER_05 29:34

Yeah, I've read a few of John Simpson's books. I'm glad you referenced it, because yeah, he's he's a character. There's one story where he interviews uh Idi Amin, who was trying to for a while, and um there's a bit in it about aubergines, which I won't go into detail, but it's very funny because it's interviewing by a poolside. Anyway, I leave that to people's imagination. Um okay, so I'd like to come on then to something you mentioned earlier about where we are with oil as an industry. Um, because we've got oil as petrochem and we've got oil as burnt fuel, if you like. So can we just clarify this situation or this position that you might have and others around we can't just dismantle the oil industry per se, because the petrochem side of it, where it's not burning in the same way as we do with with hydrocarbons in a few. So so how do we present? Because I don't think it's presented well enough to date that we want, for argument's sake, we want to keep half the oil industry, the good half, but we don't want the other half. How do we help it, how do we help it go through that that journey of change then? How do we get a managed transition to do that? Because what you hear from just stop oil or whatever, it's the whole of oil. But if we do that, there's a consequence to the whole of how modern the modern world works.

BP’s Climate Pivot And Imperial History

SPEAKER_04 30:58

So I think of myself as optimistic and realistic. And I like to anchor uh as much as possible my thinking in the best possible science. And if you look at the UN climate science panel, it doesn't say switch off oil, gas, coal overnight. It says phase them out at different rates by 2050. Right. So that's the first thing. Because very often, oil industry people say, oh, you greenies, you want to send us back to the Stone Age. No, no one's saying that. They're just saying use less of it. And it seems to me, if you look at the art of the possible, where can we do without oil? Well, transport. Fantastic electric cars. Exactly. I'm amazed by the news coming out of China about electric trucks. Yep. Amazed by the news about the first electric battery-powered container ship. Not very big, but nevertheless, it's for inland waterways, decent size. I mean, a lot of things which only five years ago looked implausible are suddenly just happening. The price of batteries, the price of solar. So this electro-tech revolution, I think, gives us a chance to massively reduce rapidly our need for oil for transport. Now that's one use. You can then look at heating. Heat pumps, we've got a heat pump, it works perfectly well. We don't use gas, you don't need to. So you can't, not everywhere. I know there are all kinds of problems with the location of heat pumps for flats and so forth. But by and large, a lot of our heating could be electric. And if you see the possibilities, you suddenly see how, well, actually, wait a minute, we can do with less oil. Yeah. Without massive disruption.

SPEAKER_05 32:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:44

And I think that's the starting point. How far can we get to what the climate scientists say we need to do to avoid really hairy conditions down the track?

SPEAKER_05 32:54

But this goes right back to something I think you said right in the beginning, which is about where we where we are trying to tackle climate change and some of that stuff around, you know, uh denial, doubt, delay, distract, some of those kind of four D's, if you like. Um four P's that are using a few of these.

SPEAKER_04 33:13

I've not forgotten the D, but there we go. Yeah, they're in the book. What are the P's then?

SPEAKER_05 33:16

I may know those. But no, your your D, your D's are those. Daniel Denial, delay, delay, distract. Distract, yeah, that's right. Distract being a sort of latter inclusion, if you like. But the thing that in business, in the world that I've been in, the motor industry for a long time, uh, you know, certainly in terms of where we've changed things for the better, I believe, we've always worked on four P's, four principles. People, process, sorry, not four P's, but four, four, four columns. People, process, systems, culture.

SPEAKER_04 33:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 33:44

You know, and in trying to get engaged people to go on a journey of change, you know, the people bit, the process bit, the culture bit's really important to get people to understand, you know, what it means for them as individual, you know. And and that this is the other thing about the book. This is about our individual lives. This isn't about corporate life, national life. It is about being that person in a basement flat that might drown. It is about being in a situation where a fire might occur and you, you know, your helpful stuff's gonna happen. And it is also about shouting out uh here's another question for you then. You talk to um uh you talk to oh god, let me start that bit again. Uh what was it, Kissy Deborah? What was her name? Oh, Ella, Ella, yeah. Yeah, who died eight nine.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:30

So another consequential part of the book is a conversation about Ella Kissy Deborah, that young girl who died because of air quality issues, close to one of the major road arteries in London. Um, and that's not conjecture, that is now legal precedent. You spoke to her mother, you who is a brilliant campaigner, by the way. I mean, she's extraordinary. Um, but tell me if I'm wrong. Why, if that was legal precedent some good years ago now, haven't we had more and more cases of it come up? Because I thought that that was what it was going to trigger.

SPEAKER_04 35:07

Well, it was an immense scientific and legal effort just to get that case through. And for the coroner, for the first time in legal history, to say, yes, air pollution did contribute to the death of this poor young girl. It was an immense amount of work because to prove the case, you can it's very easy, well, not easy. It's it's a it's a scientific task that's well established to say if you look at how dirty the air is in a city or across a country, and you look at the pattern of deaths in that country or city, people dying of various causes at certain ages, you can then say, well, actually, it's likely, more than likely, that air pollution contributed to their death. Yes. Much harder is to say an individual died because of air pollution. So what they did in this case with Ella, she died, and a brilliant scientist went through all the records. Every date of her 30 emergency admissions to hospital between the ages of seven and nine. The 30th was her last. And he then got hold of all the records from the nearby air pollution monitors in that part of London.

SPEAKER_05 36:17

And tried the South Circular Road, I think. It was the South Circular, South Circular.

SPEAKER_04 36:21

And could see that pretty well on every occasion of those 30 emergency admissions to hospital, um, there was a spike in air pollution that day. Presented the evidence to the inquest, and that was um that was deemed to be really important. So it it well, a lot of these things don't produce the reaction that one would want, but it was used by Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, to say, well, how much more evidence do we need for the ultra-low emission zone to restrict the number of filthy cars coming into the city? Yeah. And now I know that's controversial, and I know a lot of uh for a lot of people it was it was a real affront to their sense of liberty, their rights as a motorist. But if you look at it from another point of view, what is the cost to the NHS of asthma? Well, three billion a year.

SPEAKER_05 37:13

Well, I mean we want to reduce that. Here's where I'm trying to get my head around a lot of what comes out of the book, which is, and I think we've ducked in and out of the issue, how do we quantify, you know, cause and effect? How do we quantify um prevention rather than cure? And I this might sound a bit glib to say, given how serious your book is. Is our principal problem here about modern accounting? How we appropriate, you know, costs to things, how we have, you know, with companies quarterly reporting. No, no, with governments, you know, it's a little bit broader and a little bit longer term. But is potentially why we've got a problem because of how accounting works. It sounds weird to me.

Phasing Out Fossil Fuels Without Chaos

SPEAKER_04 38:00

Well, no, no, I think you're you're you're right. We have a short-term mindset. Politicians definitely do. As you say, the obsession with the quarterly results obliges comp companies to have a short-term mindset. So, I mean, take a example, let's rewind to the 1860s in London. Waves of cholera were claiming tens of thousands of lives because the sewage wasn't properly handled.

SPEAKER_01 38:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:23

And for years, no government wanted to spend the money. I mean, you know, because it was always uh, you know, do we really need to? Well, we'll get away with it. And then came the great stink when the the Thames was so disgusting that Parliament couldn't sit down, the MPs couldn't face being in Parliament because it was so disgusting. I was coughing because you said disgusting, I think, AJ. So but that led to an investment which at the time was highly controversial, disputed, ridiculed, but absolutely essential for bigger sewers, a proper network, a system. And the guy who supervised that, Joseph Basiljet, he he realized that London's growing. So these the sewers he installed, that he dug were twice as big as what was needed at the time, because he knew the population was going to double. And uh he was right. Now, of course, that was in the 1860s and 70s, not nearly big enough now. But so what what you get is that I think the lesson from that is now and again whoever's in power has to just seize something and say, look, I know this is gonna involve digging all the streets. Yeah. I know it's gonna be disruptive, and it's gonna be, it'll feel expensive. But for decades to come, we will be thanked. And I think we we thank that investment in the 1860s in London. It makes it possible for us to be here now.

SPEAKER_05 39:52

Yes. You've alerted me or nudged me to there was a book on Start the Week, I think it was last week, which was referencing countries around the world that are doing some just what you've alluded to, planning and preparing. I was surprised your book wasn't on it, to be honest with you, because I'm listening to it thinking, hang on, hang on, hang on. This is David Shookman's book, all over this topic. You know, I think there were three different authors on there. They're all very good, but I kind of thought it felt to me like you're conspicuous by your absence. I don't know if you hadn't, you know, bring up the priests. Well, you know, I I I I could do, but um I I I don't know them. But no, but the reason why I'm saying this is because I can't think of the name of the book now. But but it was about best practice. How can some of these countries, I think Singapore was there and a few others, and Norway, you know, in regards to EVs and where we are with energy and all that stuff, why is it some of these countries have done that? How are they long-term thinkers? They're not just, it's just because they're not democratic. You can be democratic and have long-term strategic thinking.

Air Pollution Death And The ULEZ Debate

SPEAKER_04 40:55

I think a lot of it's political philosophy. So at the time when the North Sea was really being developed, uh, Norway decided to retain ownership, but state level of its resources, and created the sovereign wealth fund, now worth a lot of money. One and a half trillion, two trillion. It's huge. The UK went down a different path with privatization, encouraged private oil companies to come in and uh and and and pay revenues to the uh to the treasury, but nevertheless it was in private hands. And the government just used whatever money came its way off, you know, year after year. There was no sense of let's accumulate for a for a future. And of course, that's that's the kind of thinking that always pays off. If you could so the government calculation with it's very hard, and you mentioned this about accounting, how does it work? You can always challenge the stats, but the government calculation when it comes to flood defense, so if we're gonna build a new flood defense for some housing development or a city or by a river on the coast, wherever it is, that the the standard accepted treasury calculation is for every pound you spend, you get an eight pound benefit. That sounds good. Which sounds very good. Yeah. You've still got to spend the pound. So in a rubber. If it's a hundred million quid for a new tidal barrier. Right, yeah. If in the case of London, London will need a new and bigger Thames barrier, which will run into God knows what. But I mean 10 billion. I'm making that up, 15 billion. It'll be a big number, right? You will get your multiplier, undoubtedly, of eight to ten times, but you've still got to find the money up front before anyone sees the benefit. So that's a big task of education. And I I I try to explore what it is in i in the book. I I think people are often coy about talking about danger. They don't want to confront it, they don't want to scare people, but I think genuinely we live at a time of increasing risk. We need to be upfront with people and say these are dangers.

SPEAKER_05 43:06

Well, let's be honest. I and I think, and I read some comments on a LinkedIn post you put on that were, you know, a bit disparaging, a little bit dismissive. And I can't. Quite thick-skinned, are you thinking? You've got to be, you know, you've got to be. Just listen to them all. Everyone's entitled to an opinion. Sure. But there was this thing, you know, they're basically saying, oh, you're being alarmist, or, you know, oh God, it got hot in Britain. Wow. You know, and all of this stuff. But the truth is, every single day we all prepare for things that might not happen. It's the way you go about, you know, the journey to work. It's about how fast you do or don't drive. It's about where you are at nighttime, you know, man or woman. Do you wear a seatbelt? Yeah, it's about all of those things which we do often subliminally, because we know if we don't, we're more exposed to danger. So I don't think it it's necessarily you're arguing for something that we don't really do. Because I think it's in a All of us to have that alert awareness of potential dangers and act accordingly. All you're suggesting is you scale up and it's at state level.

SPEAKER_04 44:10

Well, yeah, I think you need all levels to be sensitized to this and to think about it. And I think to do that, we have to be very mindful of language. We have to be careful how we talk about. If we say, let's all save the planet together from climate change, you've lost most of the audience straight away. If you say, Do you know, your house, because of where it is, might become uninsurable against flooding. Or if you say, you know, your daughter's asthma is made worse by air pollution, which is made worse by fat cat big business. You get a very different response. You you you suddenly cut through. And I think the more we talk, the more we go, we that rather than talking about global warming, we actually make it more personal, more individual. That it's more about how do we, how are we going to keep ourselves safe, our families safe, how are we going to make sure our businesses don't go underwater or burn to the ground. And I think if you can frame it that way, uh you've got more of a chance, I think, of reaching a greater number of people.

SPEAKER_05 45:14

I I think I think you're absolutely right. And I did make a note of one of the comments in it. Gunter Tallinger of Alliance said the trouble begins when people and corporations can't afford to pay for insurance. These areas and parts around the world that are increasingly there, where, you know, flood once, flood twice. Well, here in the UK, you know, there are lots of places now where you can't insure your house. And, you know, that is consequential, certainly to the individual or the corporation, and you know, progressively to to the whole of society. And you've referenced quite a few people, a few I've bumped into uh over the years, and and people that I admire. Um, but one of the most poignant parts in the book was the recount of what happened uh to Michael Mosley, who a lot of people will know, and we saw the sad story unfold on on the news, on television, where he, you know, he he's on holiday. We've all been on holiday, he's somewhere hot, that's where we typically go on holiday. He's a very intelligent man, he's a very smart man. He goes out for the day and just loses all his orientation and sadly and tragically dies. I mean, it's a I I find it.

Short-Term Thinking Versus Real Resilience

SPEAKER_04 46:29

I I knew him because we both worked in BBC Science, an incredibly likable guy. It's infectious. Oh, he was so good. And he was so good. Yeah, he had this career that was very successful, yeah, but then went meteoric when he put himself on camera. He'd been a producer. Oh, really? Yeah, and then suddenly when he was on camera, was he such a such a marvelous guy? But yeah, no, it's a terrible story. I tried to piece together kind of what happened, and uh his wife described how they were on a beach, he got bored, wasn't happy with his book, said, I'm going for a walk. Well, it was it was 40 that day, and it's an island in Greece that that doesn't have many trees. He had a hat, he had an umbrella, he had a bottle of water, he was in shorts, and he he he went off for a walk. And um within two and a half hours of setting off, he was dead. Now it just seems to me that it highlights how how heat, extreme heat, plays on us in ways that we don't fully understand, not widely understood. And uh the Greek police, their post-mortem blamed heat. The British coroner said it didn't land on a particular verdict that suggested that heat might have been involved. There may have been some completely other factor at work that we don't know about, but the fact is where he walked would have taken him onto a south-facing slope at two, three o'clock in the afternoon with no shade at all on bare rock, where you might easily have hit 50. Now you you get to, and if you're walking and clambering as he was, the body is trying to get rid of heat. Yeah, it's generating heat, trying to get rid of it. And the for the Greeks, the the Greek tourist authorities saw that you know that they lost a number of people. Basically tourists of that kind of age. Yeah. And and I think a lot of it is about just recognizing that heat is a force, and because it's invisible, we're not that aware of it.

SPEAKER_05 48:42

And it can be very, very dangerous. Well, you know, as I said, you chronicle so so much in the book, and and I I I think it's too easy and simplistic for people to say, well, of course it gets hot sometimes, or certain parts of the world get hotter. Yes, there's extreme rain and and uh and all of that, but it's the consequential side of this happening more often to a more extreme level without any kind of preparedness for it, and carrying on, you know, carrying on as usual.

SPEAKER_04 49:13

Um that's basically it.

SPEAKER_05 49:16

And it's not usual anymore. It's unusual, but then unusual is becoming the norm.

SPEAKER_04 49:21

And this is what happens, because we we talk about the the global average temperature rising. You think, well, it's only it's risen by a degree in a bit. What difference could that possibly make? Well, when your baseline goes up and your weather is highly variable, your extremes become more extreme. Your upper extremes, your you your heat waves are likely to become worse. Yes. And there's basic physics behind warmer air can hold more moisture, you're going to get heavier downpours. So a lot of this stuff is not only predictable, but was predicted, but dismissed. Well, indeed, even by the oil industry.

SPEAKER_05 49:57

Did its own research. Well, the Exxon report, you you allude to that in in here very much.

SPEAKER_04 50:02

A classic criticism is how can CO2, which makes up l much less than 1% of the atmosphere, possibly have any bearing on our extreme extremities of our weather. And well, I mean, the one answer is you've got a glass of water, how small a drop of arsenic would you allow me to put in? Exactly. Yeah. Well, even the tiniest drop can have an effect. Yeah. And that's just basic, uh, basic physics, which we've known about for 170 years or so. Indeed. You know.

SPEAKER_05 50:32

Well, look, let's finish on a word I love and a principle I think we should all adopt, certainly in terms of having the privilege to communicate to people, um, is hope. What is your hope for the future? You you mentioned very poignantly that when the books arrived, they're about to go out and and people can buy them. The the the comment you'd put in in the front, the the link to your grandson, the dedication to your grandson m moved you perhaps more than you'd anticipated. Why why was that? Where's the hope?

Insurance Risk And Personalizing The Threat

SPEAKER_04 51:04

Well, I mean, for a lot of any for anyone who's who's who's thought about climate change, uh, reported on it, you you look ahead, a lot of the models, everyone talks about net zero by 2050. Well, my grandson will be in his mid-20s in 2050. So this matters to him. If you talk about uh what's going to happen to us by the end of the century, well, he'll be in his 60s. Yeah, right. So this really this really counts. So that's the motivation for me now. And I can I can picture him in his later years, saying, Oh, hang on, why didn't that lot, that granddad, do anything about this? And um, but when you look around the world and you mention China, you know, the phenomenal shift in industrial prowess in China. They they set about becoming the dominant power in energy and transport and battery storage and all the rest of it, did all the things. I went to a UK-China conference at the Royal Society in London about 15 years ago. And you had science teams from both countries presenting their research. And there were some brilliant ideas from the Brits, but they were all pretty small scale. You know, we've got this test tube here, and we've got this lab thing here, and we've got a slightly bigger thing over here, and then the Chinese stood up. And then we have got this monster factory where we're already making 5,000 of these things to see if they work. They they spotted that this was the future. It's a little bit like I always think in the in the in the sort of late 1700s, early 1800s, the pioneers of steam in Britain, who really led the way with this new technology, and then the French, Germans, Americans send their best engineers to come and take a look and say, nah, we'll stick with horses.

SPEAKER_03 52:56

Right?

SPEAKER_04 52:57

And that's where we are. And I think I I know it's controversial, you know. Do we do we want a situation where we all become dependent on Chinese products? Um, but but this is the fact. And and and I think if we can grasp that there is now the potential to move to cleaner sources of power, vehicles that don't have exhaust pipes, wouldn't that be wonderful? You know, so the air's cleaner. I want my grandson to come up and said he's cleaner air. Clearly.

SPEAKER_02 53:26

So you don't cough so much being in London, yeah.

Heat As An Invisible Killer

SPEAKER_05 53:29

Coughing on cue. Yeah. Um, well, look. So that gives me hope. Yes, good. Hope is a great thing. So I would recommend anybody reads this book to equip you with where to what hope we need to apply, what what kind of conversations we need to have with people that we meet, how we can all collectively then get to the point where it triggers action uh with politicians, legislators, etc. Because I think that's the great thing of good journalism, that it, you know, um what's the Dorethian? Informs. Inform, educate, and entertain. Yeah, yeah. You certainly inform, so and and I think the other two as well. So, David, it's been a privilege to meet with you. I really enjoyed this. Love being here at the BBC with you. You know, I feel like I'm a sort of pseudo-journalist for an hour. Um, so good luck with it. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you. And now back to the studio. I think what was I mean to say that? Um, no, thanks.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

And and oh we didn't do it. Thanks for listening to the show, and make sure you follow Roger on LinkedIn, where you'll discover almost all there is to know about the spectacular electronic thing.