Thank you all and just by way of quick introductions, I'm Italian Mukherjee I'm currently acting director Reuters Institute journalism. Just as our name suggests, we work with journalists from across the world on issues that we think are of utmost importance in terms of the challenges the industry is facing. One of the things we did two years back was give birth to literally the idea of the Oxford climate journalism network. What are we doing? We're talking to journalists across the world. And when I say across the world, I would like to underline that word because we've now worked with journalists from 106 countries about the need and importance of building climate into what they report we're not talking to a climate reporter and we're not talking to a climate desk. We're talking to everyone in journalism about why climate is a lens they need to apply when they are reporting a story accurately. That's a little bit of context about what we do. I know it's a very big room, and a more intimate audience. So I'll try and sort of modulate my audio to not sound bombastic, but fill the room. Before we start the discussion with Freddie foam. You've heard some very warm and getting words. I just want to take a second also, particularly because we're stepping into coop in a few days from now to pause and pay tribute to and give thanks to and just remember, Professor Salim al Hawk, who was well, he was many things but for us he was part of the advisory board of the Oxford climate journalism network. He worked with journalists and that's 100 journalists every cohort and did a session on loss and damages. Diego has done six cops I think Professor Hawk did. I don't know how many I think all and he's the man really behind the idea of a loss and damages fund. I think it's quite fitting as well. Because for those of you who may not know the word Hawk, in order to means right, and I think no one could speak better to the rights of those who need it and deserve it when you talk about loss and damages. So having said that, let's move into the conversation. What we usually do is play a brief video just to give you some context of what we're talking about and what the general lay of the land is and then of course it will be over to Friday.
Pretty I'm not Nish Kumar, but I will try to keep this an engaging conversation. And for those who haven't seen this, I highly recommend an extremely engaging video that Freddie's a part of where she's talking about the climate challenges and so is Nish Kumar just in slightly different languages. But both I think very, very important ones. It would be good I think for people gathered here to first understand a little bit around and behind the birth of the organization that you co founded. And I just want to put a play set there which is in a continent like the USA for example, we are at current count going with what 40 Plus in terms of natural disasters $1 billion in terms of the monetary impact of that. What are we talking about when we talk about extreme weather events?
Well, I think that is actually always a difficult question, because there is a very simple definition of what an extreme weather event is, from a scientific point of view. It's just rare. So it's sort of in the tails of the distribution. So in the 90th percentile, or 10th percentile of the distribution, such as something that doesn't happen very often is what scientifically is an extreme weather event. But of course, what we usually talk about when we talk about extreme weather events are weather events that have led or lead to severe impacts on people on ecosystems. And these events don't have to be rare at all from a scientific point of view. And so also with with World weather attribution, we have we are actually looking at events that cause extreme impacts in lots of them and severe impacts on people. That's the events we're looking at whether they are they're rare from a scientific point of view or not.
I think it's important to make the point about rare and I suppose that's what the big jolt has been in the last few years as we see it. So definitely more intense, more likely. more deadly. But the tricky one is, is the middle one, the more likely that these events have become from when you started to where we're at now Friday just to give people a sense of what you're dealing with, what's the increase look like?
So when we when we started to do to do whatever attribution and when, when I started to do this, this kind of work is is roughly 10 years ago, it's a bit over 10 years ago. So global mean temperatures were about naught point eight degrees then now we have about 1.2 degree of global degrees of global warming. So that's only that's a bit well, that's a bit over a decade, but we have seen a huge increase in warming in that time. And that of course, we always talk about global mean temperatures. So we always talk about the Paris goals of 1.5 degrees and two degrees. So it has brought us a lot closer to that. But of course, what that means on the ground is that extreme events and particular heat waves then used to be extreme events from a scientific point of view rare events happening only once in a century or so are now actually not rare events anymore at all. And so particularly this this summer we've seen over the last two years before that as well. The extreme heat we've we saw in in the US the extreme heat we saw in southern Southern Europe, extreme heat, we saw in China. Those were all events that would have been impossible to occur without human induced climate change, which means they would have been so rare without climate change that they would you would expect them to happen. Well, yeah, once in a billion years or so which is the statistical equivalent of off never. But now these events so we've done studies on on this. Yeah, on the heatwave, and Southern Europe is about a one and 10 year event today. The heatwave in China is about a one and five year event today. So that means of course not that it happens every 10 years. But it means that in any given year at this climate we live in today a 1.25 degrees warming roughly. There is a 10% chance of such an extreme heatwave to happen. But as long as we burn fossil fuels, these charges are increasing very fast. And so it will be something that is actually a normal summer and depending on when we stop burning fossil fuels, it might be that what we have experienced this summer in large parts of the Northern Hemisphere will actually be a cool summer
and that's the most important part of the work that you do the attribution you know, in essence, who specifically is responsible? When you started off and I and I read about this, was it that easy to sort of explain this to a larger a larger community, both the scientific community and the broader the broader audience if you will?
No, no, it wasn't and I'm, I'm not sure it's easy now. I think it's, it's, it's it has definitely become easier because it's just something we've been talking about a lot and also something you just, you just can't avoid anymore. You can't walk out the door without experiencing extreme weather more or less to slightly paraphrase Nish Kumar,
that just minus the expletives.
But when so when we started the first event we have ever tried to attribute was in for weird weather attribution. So in this rapid way where we do a scientific study, but not on the normal scientific timescales, which are usually well you work for six months or so on on a study. And then you send it out for peer review to scientific journal, and then you you wait for a year or year and a half and then two years after the event has occurred. You have the result of the role of climate change. So that's sort of how the timescale the timescales of academic publishing work. And of course, everyone has completely forgotten about the event by then and so the reason for setting up world weather attribution was that this this this way of, of working in the scientific community meant that when extreme weather events happened, and of course, also 10 years ago, people always asked the question, when an extreme event happened, was this climate change? Then lots of people gave answers, but the scientific community was basically silent. And so all the people who gave answers had no scientific evidence for whatever they were saying, but just opinions and political ideas. And so the reason for us for founding world weather attribution was that we wanted to bring in scientific evidence into this conversation that was happening anyway. And so that was why why we set up well whether attribution said okay, we can actually do these studies fast. We can, of course, peer review them fast, but we can do them fast. And that was and that was what we what we did and the first study we ever did was on a heatwave in Paris and 2015 It was actually not just in Paris. We were in Paris at the time, Pitfall for for a scientific conference. But the heatwave wasn't in large parts of Western Europe. And we looked at different cities, Zurich, and Madrid and Paris itself, and answered the question whether and to what extent human induced climate change had made this event hotter and more likely. No one really covered the study at all. So we didn't get any journalist picking, picking this up, but a lot of scientists noticed it and said, Oh, you can't do this. This is too fast. And, and so and, and also saying, oh, because we didn't, and of course, at that time, we thought, okay, we just calculate the numbers, and sort of write a little fact sheet. But then, and then lots of us actually scientists were questioning what exactly did you do? And then we actually ended up then afterwards writing up a paper to explain what we did. And so this is still what we do. So every time we do a rapid study now, we also write up a paper that is, in essence, a scientific paper so that every step that we do is documented as absolutely transparent what we do, everyone, all our all the data we use is freely available, so everyone can go away and redo what we do. Yeah, so and then, I think the next study we did was on storm Desmond. Here in the UK, which was the first one where we actually reached some journalists and some media were covering our studies and yeah, I think we've since then, grown massively the media we reach with these studies. So there's, we could do so many more studies then than we actually can do with the people we have. So there's a huge demand still for this kind of information.
Yeah. And what's the point of friction that you still face when you you know, when you do when you do your work? Because it seems almost intuitive. Now, at this point in time, we believe that it's very clear correlation. Where is it that you still face friction when you when you talk about with attribution? So
for some types of extreme events, there's we basically don't actually need to do a study if you want to know is climate change playing role? So we know that every heat wave that's happening now has been made, more likely more intense because of climate change. But of course, how much more likely and how much more intense is something that you can't say globally, so that depends on the local context. But that's not the case for other types of extreme events. So for heavy rainfall, we know on a global on global average, because a warmer water at a warmer atmosphere can help more water vapor. And that needs to get out of the atmosphere. So we do see an increase in heavy rainfall globally, but locally, that can be counteracted by changes in the atmospheric circulation. So that means where weather systems develop, how they move, and this these two effects And we have now formalize this process. So we have for every type of extreme event. So for flooding, it's either so one criteria is that 100 or more people have lost their lives or a million or more people are affected or more than 50% of our population are affected. So that will then trigger an event, bring it to our attention, create similar criteria for drought. Heat Waves
First, we have many more events that are triggered because more people are affected by extreme weather. And it's it's usually people who have a little education who are who are unemployed and have therefore also very little economic means. They are the ones who are the first to die in an extreme weather events event. They are the ones who suffer the lungs longest if they haven't died after an extreme weather event to recover. So it's for example, even in a country like like the US which on average probably has Yeah, it's not a very vulnerable in in the parts of Houston that have been destroyed by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. That yeah, the rich people have rebuild the houses and a fine that's not a problem but those the poorer parts of the population who have lost their houses have still lived still in temporary housing have still not meant not got their life back to their feet. And that's something we see. We see across the world. So every time when people talk about adaptation, it's usually people think about building a dam, or, or some other kind of fancy infrastructure, flood defense. But actually, the best thing to adapt to climate change is to increase education, to have better build houses. To have access, access to information for for the whole population to have access to health care, and have access also to the to other economic and other sources of income then, for example, agriculture in drought prone areas.
Yeah. It's a good segue also to ask you on, and this is where the work that you've done stands out amongst other organizations working on climate, which is that you've engaged quite deeply and actively with the journalistic community. I mean, in terms of resources, I think it's in any number of languages Spanish, Japanese, Hindi, if you go to your website, and you've always been quite accessible to the journalistic community. Why do you think that's important?
It's sort of all hands on deck. So we we've we've founded world weather attribution because because this conversation in the media, particularly in the media, about what the role of climate change is, in extreme weather events is happening anyway. And also, extreme weather events are something that focuses the attention of people on on their environment in a way and the media is writing about it. And so yeah, and so, if we want and that was that is what we, we did want if we want to have this conversation happen on the basis of scientific evidence on what the role of climate change is, what the role of vulnerability is, what what the role of exposure is, we need to we need to engage with the people who read the stories and who tell the stories and who, who build the narratives around these extreme events. And these are to a large degree journalists and so so that is why we have Yeah, from from early on, reached out to journalists that that we knew which were very few at the time and have have grown that network and yeah, and we very regularly Well, I I always come and give a seminar on on your course. But we also do do just background workshops for journalists. And every time we publish a study, we do a media briefing. And if it's a study about an extreme event in Rwanda and the Congo then we have maybe two journalists show up, we still do a media briefing for them. If it's something that happens in the US, we have 200 journalists coming back. But it's still of course, when you have these small media briefings that also allows to give more details and to build relationships with journalists. And I think I think that it is just important that that also, I hope that Yeah, and also I try at the same time, trying to people in my team to give them media training to encourage them to talk to journalists, so that journalists have a broader network of scientists to speak to. Yeah,
it's a good point, I think, to share with the audience that yesterday, the Reuters Institute published our own research that we do across eight countries in terms of climate news, and how audiences engaged with that. Shout out to the lead author of Akasa Jas I caught that, but I think so many important findings there ready for most people, they feel that anyone who can impact large and important verticals like business and policy and politics remain the media. But what was also interesting was that across some of these countries like India and Pakistan, for instance, people don't see the impact of climate change as right here right now. It's something that they park a bit far. But what they do feel right here right now is the impact of health. They all feel that climate is impacting their health and the health of their families. Is that something that you've started working more deeply around as well? You just put the humanitarian focus.
Yes, although and I said earlier on, I talked about the trigger criteria. Heat waves are really difficult. So we know that the deadliest extreme weather events are heat waves. Heat waves have Yeah, well, we do have the data. So in London and southern UK, last year was an extreme heatwave. In two days, more than 2000 people died because of the extreme heat. But these people don't fall down on the street. They they are often people that already have Yeah, have pre existing medical conditions, or they are people who are living in very poor housing and just die in their poorly insulated homes or, or in or in hospitals. And so we don't see them, the numbers will only be available, whether they're available at all month after the event. So it's not something you see, and therefore it's something that is incredibly difficult to track. So for heatwaves, we don't have a humanitarian impact tracker just because no one in the world is tracking the humanitarian impacts of heat waves, apart from retrospective in some countries, so in the UK, and so other European countries in the US there is this retrospective so that a few months after you have the data, but in most countries, not even the not even the weather services are tracking heatwave. So we it's actually really difficult to to make this connection to health. India's is an exception there with the well they have. They have well there's huge awareness of that and some and where you also have and I think that's something that's really important. Well, you have some cities that have implemented heat health action plans, and where you've seen now that the death toll and heat waves is going down in those cities, but not in the cities where this was happening. And I think this is something that we are trying to have this information and also trying to understand what are the health impacts in other parts of the world? So we have a new project with Kenya with hospitals in Nairobi, and Mombasa and to try and make this connection more transparent. And then hopefully to use that also to be able to talk about it so that people are aware that heat waves are killers.
And a part of that conversation for countries such as those is the loss and damages Fund and the conversations that have happened in the run up to cop. I think more than ever before there is a sense of frustration amongst journalists who are approaching that event. It almost seems like someone's picked it up and run with it. And it's not, you know, in the shape and form that it was. You're a veteran of many climate trenches. What would what would be a good way to approach this journalistically is your sense with the kind of Red Letter year that we're closing up with on extreme weather events and the fact that we have a cop that is quite vitiated in terms of the atmosphere and the mood. Well,
I think, well, there is this refocusing attention on the climate crisis title. So I think the first or the first step to approach this is to think about well, what's cup about it's, we have the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is a human rights treaty. It's not a treaty to save the polar bear. It's not it's not an environmental treaty, per se. It is it is a human rights treaty, which if you read the preamble, which of course no one else does, is clearly written in there. But the way we talk about the climate crisis and the way that the climate crisis and cops are talked about is is about accounting, carbon accounting, or it's about Yeah, well, and this is why the refocusing is necessary because it's it has become, again much more of a cultural war topic than than it used to be only a few years back that it is that climate change and particularly climate policy is seen as something that is a luxury that is something for some woke lefties. But that is not something that or ordinary people or that that people have have the time for or could afford. We don't talk about that we have we need these climate policies. Because the climate crisis is impacting the human the most basic human rights of people across the world. If because we don't have effective climate policy we don't we still burn more and more fossil fuels every year. So at this at the current rate of burning fossil fuels, which is about 40 billion tons of co2 a year. That means in six years, the carbon budget for 1.5 degrees gone. So we still haven't done anything. Really not Not, not at nothing, but we're still nowhere near to where we need to be to take these goals serious. And of course, loss and damage has always been part or not always but has for a long time been part of the negotiations. What has always been ill defined words and nothing more and I think what we need to do is to connect who is actually to connect these technical terms with what it actually means loss and damage means people dying in London or, or have died in London as well as of course, in, in Kenya in other parts of the world. But it's not something that's happening in the future or somewhere else. It's happening here. And now. And I think the most important thing is that the climate policy so that we need make life better for the vast majority of people apart from those very rich who really benefit from from the money made by burning and digging up fossil fuels, but that's a tiny percentage of the population most of us don't profit from that at all, but suffer the consequences and pay for the consequences with our health with our lives. And but also economically, because, well, Rishi Sunak when he decided, oh, people had enough of climate policy, the one law he cancelled was the one that would have forced landlords to insulate homes, which would have meant even if you incur include increase in rent because of the costs for the insulation would have meant, on average 300 pounds a year or less. But that's that no one talks about that. That's nowhere in the media.
I think that he is unique because in the irony of ironies, even the auto companies stood out and said that that's not what we asked for. That's clearly not a well thought out idea. But perhaps we live in done just one final question. From me, because I'm sure the audience has many. It's also a little bit of a rock and a hard place. I think for journalists right now, where there is a sense that when it's extreme weather event reporting, there is there is some fatigue amongst the audience after a while they say, I don't want to engage with this anymore. There's nothing I can do about it. On the other end, the Ask seems to be do more solutions journalism, but that doesn't get the kind of impact and reach that I would get when I'm talking about extreme weather. You know, how do you navigate your way around this and fight that very real challenge that audiences are feeling tired and fatigued with the bad news?
I think Well, I think that actually all the all the work that we've done, and every extreme event that we looked at, is it shows it of course, it's always we always look at disasters we always look at at human human suffering. humanitarian suffering, but it also always shows that are often really simple things that you could change, that would mean that the next time and extreme weather events hits, things would be better. And so one of these really simple things are for example, he action plans, and they start really with basic things like okay, you want that as a heatwave. You don't illustrate the the the warnings with people having fun at the beach, but with with actually some some real consequences. And you don't tell people Oh, temperatures will be above four degrees, but you tell people okay, it will be really dangerous to go out between these hours, especially if you live in inner cities where there is no green space and so on. And and then you open public buildings that are air conditioned, you tell people where they are so that people can go cool. In cool to cool places. You provide water publicly available so that people can fill the water bottles everywhere. So a lot of things and that saves lots of lives. And and that also means it's not something you have to wait for the cop to make a decision on that that we don't have to agree globally that we can have water fountains. So that is something that that like where there's really so much agency locally on all scales. And I think that's, that's the stories that that hopefully might help. Yeah,
well let me open it up. And go forth to first respondent Diego.
Thanks. Pretty. It's always lovely to have you at the Institute for the recessions and for this so thanks for making time again. I remember thinking what are the what are fountains of the media industry? Like what are the quicker solutions that I think we can implement in newsrooms? Because I think one thing reporters, especially a reporter, like media secretaries thing is like I can call college better on its I have more money to invest in my newsroom, and we don't have much money in the students tree. So it's really hard. I think it's a couple of points where that we were talking earlier with Katherine, my colleague and the fellow stay that we don't say we'd have money to cover wars, or the World Cup, like we always say there's money to cover stuff that needs to be covered. So so just need to be found ways to around. I think for that an idea could be restructuring, newsrooms can be one of the ways to do what are water fountains. And this could be done different ways. One of the solutions could be fully political Europe has a senior correspondent that responds to the editor in chief of news or think Managing Editor of newsroom so you putting someone in in the newsroom in a position that actually can actually influence policy in the newsroom a high level and respond to someone higher up or did an African South Africa, their editor of the climate section, or the daily Maverick is also the managing editor of the paper. So she has a position that she can change policy internally, while also responding without having to invest to say more people more funding, whatever, but also ways you can just find your local expert in your climates in your in your newsroom and say can you train my team to do more common reporting and find more kind of paragraphs in stories? If you can make more climate news in the front page, then add more climate paragraphs to each story you're doing in the newsroom? And I think trying to find the water fountains of the newsroom policy is so good way to just start changing our narrative that we can do anything about it until we have more money in newsrooms to start changing how we cover climate change.
Thank you for that Diego. Let me take some responses from Sonya as well and then maybe get produced thoughts and then go back to the audience.
Yeah, well, thank you very much, Freddie and Vitaly. That was a very clear explanation and touches a lot on what I've been doing in education for sustainable healthcare, because healthcare is responsible for 5% of global greenhouse gas emission equivalent. And there's a lot in health care that needs to understand education and health care needs to understand about the health impacts of climate change, which already has touched on a lot just now and also the way in which health care impacts on the nature and biodiversity and climate crises. And we need to educate doctors as well. And one of the things that doctors do that maybe journalists could help with is to do with doctors operating from a place of fear a place of there's three causes for that fear. One is fear of criticism in the media or in the press and criticism, of fear of litigation when they're trying to help patients and then fear when they're trying to do stuff and then the regulator might come in with censure. So what happens is that a lot of medical practice is defensive. And what that means is that a lot of unnecessary things are happening, which is not good for the patient. And so we should be looking at what matters to the patient and that's where journalism can come in, to educate the public that all this health care and doing everything possible because this is available isn't the way to go. And that would cut a lot of health care and provide health care for the people who need it. But overall, we need to be talking about the health impacts of climate change, and how the healthcare system contributes to the crises that we're facing. So thanks very much ready for for touching on a lot of the health aspects.
Thank you for that. I am conscious of time and I know there's questions so maybe we'll do the room first and then go to the questions online. Can we start with the gentleman here and then the lady at the back? So the mic goes to Umar first and then to the lady at the back.
Mary It would be great if you could introduce yourself and the country that you belong to
was on break from Burkina Faso, West Africa. So the questions I have many but I would just sum up first question, how can I convince my audience that climate change is real, while Western keeps up with the consumer rating system and industries in China still on? And in Africa? There is kind of new rise for industrialization How can I talk to my audience about that? And the second part is about the top 21 Paris Agreement. Finals. Where is the money? How much has been raised? Where did it go? So there's the two question but I have many.
I'm not sure Freddy knows where the money ran. But we will try and collect all the questions maybe and then bring it Yeah, please. The mic is by you.
Right. Excellent question there from the gentleman from Africa. My question is simply we have an eco cycle economic model that is driving climate climate crisis. And why aren't the newspapers challenging this? I have a website called poems for Parliament if anyone's interested. I also have business cards with me.
The lady here and then the gentleman.
Hi, Sybil, I'm a journalist from Brazil and I'd like to thank you for your very interesting, you know, fascinating work. One of the things you said about when you take a project to investigate if whether or not this weather event was caused by climate change. When you figure out it's not caused by climate change, a lot of people get upset but I wonder to which extent it could also feel some climate change, denial denialism speeches, I wanted to ask you, how much does polarized politics influence your work how much more how much more pressure does it add and how much more purpose does it add to how, how much more importance does he add to the important work that you're doing? Thank you.
And the question from the gentleman there, maybe we'll pause after that and just get some answers.
Thanks very much. Hi, Fred. It's James painter here. We've done a lot of work on media coverage of extreme weather events in different countries. And from you've you've done these really helpful guides, as Mr. Metalia mentioned, about what journalists should and shouldn't do, or you slightly changing now, in the sense that when you're covering heat waves, and there's been no event attribution studies, do you think it's now okay to say this is almost certain that this was made more likely and more intense by climate change? And secondly, do you think you should be doing more when you do say that climate change has a role to be mentioning what the essential drivers and the problem is? That is, is our fossil fuel usage? Because in your press releases at the moment, your media briefings are not? You talk a lot about vulnerabilities and that creates problems for people, but should you be actually pinpointing what the essential problem is? That we're still using so many fossil fuels? Thanks very much.
Thanks, James. That's a bunch of questions. Would you like to just run through them? Yeah.
So So I think to Omar's question, that's really yeah, that is really, I think the most difficult question but I think part of the reason why it's so difficult is that we all have been raised and are still believing very firmly that the status quo in the West is the best possible worlds we can we can live in the best possible of all worlds. We can live in that a good life is living in an individual house that is owning a car is being in an Yeah, and scanned with lots of concrete and that that is the Yeah, the epitome of freedom. Every one of us if we think about this for a second, of course, realizes that this is not true that this this is a very weird and stupid definition of freedom, but it is the one that we that we write about that we use and that is that this this idea that this is the the model of life that we all should aspire to is still uphold and that is why it's so difficult. But actually if you if you look at if you look at the world, if you look at the numbers, if you look at the industrialized nations the standard of living of the larger part of the population has increased in in in the West, between the 1930s and the 1980s up to 1980. But since then, the standard of living has only increased for the very rich but not the rest of the population. So it's not even that it's working terribly well in the countries that that that that have been read, become rich and wealthy about by burning fossil fuels. And I think we just have to challenge this narrative that this that it's not the best possible world. And it's not that anyone takes something away from you if you can't burn coal, but actually that that you get that your life gets better that the cities that we build that we could build and should build will will be better places to live. And I think that is that it's a real challenge to change that and it's not just a just a task for the media, but for all of us. But I think that that is what is the most difficult thing. To to the question about when we don't find a role of climate change in an individual extreme event and and if that gives fodder for denialists? Well, I think we have gone from sort of, largely from climate change is not happening in in a sort of a broad part of the media to everything about that's happening is climate change. But of course the reality is in between and what we have been what we are aiming to do with our work is to show what climate change means where it's a game changer where it's but also where it's where it's not so that we have a better understanding of what it means for our daily lives. Because Because only then you have some agency to do something. If you think it's not happening, you don't do anything but if you think it's an asteroid that will fall on your hand next week, then you also don't do anything. And so I think therefore it is important to show also this where climate change does not play a role in but to be honest, it has become more difficult. These types of events are difficult and we get then actually people within the scientific community trying if they can frame the question differently to maybe find a small role of climate change which is which is really pointless, which is not it's bad enough as it is you don't have conversation
forward. And what would you do if you have that additional capacity? Thanks.
Shall we quickly collect the other questions because I know we're short on time. The gentleman there
Hello, good afternoon. My name is Marcel Seager. I'm a default student here at the School of Geography in India environment and my research group looks at pathways achieving the set preset goals particularly from a demand side perspective. And based on a nature communication paper released in 2018. There's tons of those out there but there's a clear evidence that we can achieve the low carb transition even purely based on demand side adjustments. So my question relating back to the journalist angle is instead of or in addition to highlighting studies, which look let me let me phrase it in the rear mirror, where do you see the potential or even the the implication the responsibility of journalists to look ahead and inform society to what it needs to embark on those pathways and let's face it, we even have the technology available not only hardware facing but also software facing where we can bring demand and supply together more adequately through digital technology. For instance, I see strong potential to inform society. So I'd be interested in your perspective towards informing about climates like climate weather extremes, but also looking ahead what needs to happen.
Shall we take one final question and then someone is reaching you with mic?
Hi, I'm Andrew power history. As some of you will know, I've been raising the question of how Humanities and Social Sciences people can be a bit more present in these discussions. And I think one of the things that's very striking and I think we've probably all noticed about how the media reports these things. It's very formulaic. You know, there's always it's really bad but in the last paragraph we have so it was grounds for hope, if we do this thing quickly, and you read these articles, and they're always much the same. And I think if you read articles about disastrous situations, there is a lot of focus on the most vulnerable people in those kinds of articles. They've lost everything. But what there isn't in those articles is the rich person has gone off and just build another house. And it would be it's a shift in the story, even if those articles covered both those things so that you could see that it's coming out differently for different people. At the moment. There are victims that many wealthy people or many comfortable people don't empathize with. There isn't enough coverage of the people in the middle but I suppose what I'm interested in is what Freddy might say about bringing in a kind of why did disciplinary involvement in these conversations, not as people helping to communicate the science but people helping to develop the stories so that they become a little less familiar or a little less well trodden and make those kinds of points that in a kind of capitalist facing media ecosystem it's kind of hard to make directly but that you can make indirectly by telling slightly different stories.
There are many types of articles and many types of journalists and many journalists across the world, perhaps what all of us could benefit from sort of widening the scope of the stories that we read from communities that have sometimes very different stories to tell them the ones that you narrated as sort of like copybook that you've come across, but rarely would you like to do those
I think I know forgot the first question. Oh, that was your question. Yeah, what scientists saying? I think, um, I think actually, if I if I had more, what I think the scientific community is, on the one hand, frustrated that nothing happens. But on the other hand, most my colleagues are absolutely refused to ever speak to a journalist. Unless the journalist asks the question about a specific paper they have just published. And I think unless unless we change that, then scientists really don't have that much right to be to be frustrated because I think it's, in my mind, it's part of our job, especially if you get sort of public funding to do your research to also interpret your research and to talk about it but I think so. Yeah. So one thing that and I'm even struggling with my own team to get them to talk about anything but the study they've just done so because there are lots of journalists who have questions about, oh, there's this, this politician has said X, what does the science say? And I think it's really important that then we enable also scientists to speak to that and of course, you can't speak to everything. And that's also important to say, I don't know this, but to have a bit more broader horizon and yeah, so maybe we can also do the opposite, that you train us, or that that we have, yeah, scientists who, who get more training, and not just the one media training run by the comms officer, but really, to have maybe a cohort of scientists who who become spokespeople to journalists. I think there's definitely a huge amount that needs to be done also, also from that side. It's
not a pitch to me so much again, for the eight countries that we surveyed right on top in terms of trust is climate scientists. That's where the audience places the most trust on and right at the bottom is politicians. I don't know why I even got there, but we got there. Please, you know, these the people that we want to listen to, that the audience wants to listen to. So absolutely. So
to your to your question. I think yeah, what I tried to say with with with respect to agency earlier, I think that it's really important that you don't only show the disaster and the extreme event, but then also the agency you have to change things and I think especially on the demand side, there's a lot that that you can do, but I think there's also when when we talk about mitigation most in when we're sort of in the media and the public politicians, then it's usually some dreams about future technologies and CCs and, and, and I think journalists really need to also challenge that and say, This is the science is very clear. This is ridiculously expensive. It will never be available at the scales we needed. But we have the knowledge and we have the tools to actually do all the other things like reducing the demand, other kinds of renewable energies and so on. And I think that's something that yeah, when when there are budgets for green budgets, and most of the budget goes to research and development for for CCS and best Yeah, even for some businesses. Then this is just this is just a joke. It's not what is consistent with the evidence is not what we need. And I think that needs to be challenged a lot more as well. And yeah, I think to your point I think we need a lot more different stories. And you're right. The stories are always very formulaic. I guess the stories that I tell also are always the same. So I think we do need historians, we do need novels. We do need more art. We do need lots of other sectors who really change this, this narrative that the best world we live in is the status quo. And that every every change you could possibly ask for is terrible. So I think we we really need all sides of society to challenge and change that
as you walk. Ladies and gentlemen, a very, very warm round of applause, please perfetti it's been an absolute pleasure.
So these are symposiums that we conduct every time of course at Reuters, the one special one is held in person. We will be back online next week and you can read the details on our website. For now. I want to give a big thank you to the Reuters team for putting all this together. Thank you to the green Templeton team as well for supporting us and collaborating on such a great conversation. Thank you all for being here.
