103: A new year for climate action: looking back at 2024 and ahead to 2025
As we start the new year, Matt and Jen reflect on the highs and lows of 2024, and share their hopes and expectations – and a few fears – for 2025. Plus: there’s exciting news on the future of the podcast.
Links:
Episode 76 – Water, water... everywhere?: https://www.localzeropod.com/episodes/76-water-watereverywhere
Strathclyde Institute for Sustainable Communities: https://www.strath.ac.uk/business/huntercentreforentrepreneurship/sisc/
Surfers against Sewage: https://www.sas.org.uk/
Episode 97 – Election special with Sir John Curtice and Daisy Powell-Chandler: https://www.localzeropod.com/episodes/97-election-special-with-sir-john-curtice-and-daisy-powell-chandler
Episode 101 – What to expect from COP29, following Trump’s victory?: https://www.localzeropod.com/episodes/101-what-to-expect-from-cop29-following-trumps-victory
Episode 102 – Shared ownership of clean energy projects: what, how and why?: https://www.localzeropod.com/episodes/102-shared-ownership-of-clean-energy-projects-what-how-and-why
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Jen: Hello and welcome to Local Zero.
Matt: And welcome to 2025. I'm Matt, and I'm delighted to be back with my co-host Jen to kick off what promises to be an exciting year for local climate action, and for the podcast.
Jen: It's great to be back with you, and in this episode we're going to be looking ahead and chatting through some of what's coming up in 2025.
Matt: But before we do that, we'll also be casting our minds back over a very busy 2024, and sharing our highlights and maybe a few of our low lights from the year just gone.
Jen: As ever, LinkedIn is the place to follow Local Zero. Head there to ask us questions, give us feedback or to suggest people and topics you'd really like us to feature. Just search for Local Zero podcast.
Matt: And wherever you listen to Local Zero, hit “subscribe” so you never miss an episode.
Matt: So Jen, how was your Christmas and New Year break? I ask this knowing that I can see where you are, so it's a loaded question. How was it?
Jen: Yeah, it's, it's dark where you are, whereas it's blazing sunlight where I am. Um, yeah, I had an absolutely cracking break, and a complete and utter break, too. So I flew on Christmas Eve to arrive in Christmas Day in Australia to spend time with my family here.
Jen: And basically the day after, I got a bus. People say in Australia, there isn't good public transport. There's really good public transport. I took a bus to go bush camping. So I went down and had 11 days off-grid, no power, no running water, ocean, bush, cycling, running, walking. It was amazing. I've had an incredible break. I haven't thought about work once, until today.
Matt: Great. Well, I mean, well, I'm sorry about that. Obviously I'm, I'm triggering that, that particular situation, but, um, it sounds fantastic. Warm weather, good public transportation, uh, bush, food and exercise. I'd like to have had a similar Christmas and New Year, but maybe next year we'll, we'll head down under.
Jen: So as we’re recording this it’s early evening, which kind of means it’s parrot hour. So you might hear a few squawks and squeaks, and that's the corellas and the rainbow lorikeets and so on having a great party in the beautiful trees just outside where I'm sat. So I'm really sorry if that makes you all incredibly jealous of where I'm located, but it is great.
Matt: I had a magpie fly past a moment ago. I'm not sure the mic picked it up. Um, no, I love the sound, it's beautiful.
Matt: We've had, obviously, a very busy 2024. You and I have been very busy working together setting up our Institute for Sustainable Communities, which is the kind of sponsor and funder for this podcast, but I think sort of putting that on the back burner, this has been a really big year.
Matt: I mean, they're never small years in terms of climate and sustainability action, but 2024 has been a big hairy beast. I think we've got a lot to talk about. So: highlights. Jen, is there anything looking back on 2024 you'd like to flag as a real good news story, something that really gave you heart and gave you the kind of much-needed energy and confidence that we're heading in the right direction?
Jen: Yeah, yeah, there are things. And, you know, when I was thinking about this, I went completely with the gut reaction. You know, I wasn't too cerebral about it. That's partly because I've just come off a completely epic break. Um, but two things really stood out to me as highlights from, from the last year, from 2024.
Jen: The first actually was really about the continuing rise of citizen science and really powerful stories of grassroots, kind of community, society, or kind of other NGO-supported successes when standing up for people in the planet. And the one that really sprung to my mind, you know, straight away was the work being done by Surfers Against Sewage and what they and their supporters and their incredible campaigns have achieved in terms of campaigning and petitioning and making actual change – governmental, political change – on protecting our seas and cleaning up our oceans.
Jen: And that's like a mixture of the, you know, the rising up, but also the citizen science element, the actual, you know, gathering information to give the evidence that our seas are being polluted, and it's unacceptable. So that one really, really stood out to me as a really positive highlight from the last year.
Matt: I couldn't agree more. And it's really worth me flagging the episode we did with Hugo Tagholm from Oceana. I think if I'm right in saying he used to work for Surfers Against Sewage, I think he used to lead them. Great episode. He also makes reference to Feargal Sharkey and the wonderful work he's been doing.
Matt: There's another chap, Matt Staniek, and he's been doing a tremendous amount of work on Windermere, Lake Windermere, and the, the amount of pollution. I mean, it's so sad to see these sort of algal blooms where, you know, forget even swimming, you're not even allowed to let your dog, you know, in there for a bath.
Matt: And you know what? A lot of that did filter through into Labour's manifesto. I don't think it went as hard as many of, you know, these activists and NGOs wanted them to, okay? But it was picked up, because that was very much in the public discourse at the time, and remains the case.
Jen: Yeah, and that's what I found really, really inspiring and really hopeful, and I know it's a, it's been a long and sustained effort, but it's just proof that people can make and lead to change.
Jen: So I thought that was really, really fantastic. And actually, the example you just touched on, a couple of the examples you touched on, leads on to my other highlight, which is a joint highlight, and it's maybe a bit less specific. But it's about the fact that there is really, I feel over the last year, there has been this rising wave or tide of the kind of narrative of connectivity that you know, nature, climate, society, we are all connected, you know, got the nature and climate crisis now together.
Jen: And I know that that's been, again, over the last few years, growing, but I just feel like that we've moved beyond thinking about simply carbon atoms. If we think only of carbon atoms and don't think about our food and our, you know, ecosystems, we won't have the thriving future that is within our reach, we hope is within our reach. And I, I just, I felt like 2024 to me was a year that I started to see that everywhere around me.
Matt: I agree. I think there's something here about as the climate warms, as climate adaptation becomes more pressing – I'm not ever going to say more pressing than mitigation because every fraction of a degree we can mitigate against is adaptation we don't need to attempt, you know, we can't even, can't even achieve much of it, let alone, um, but we certainly don't have to attempt it. But I think as adaptation becomes more and more important, I think that nature/climate nexus, that connectivity between the two, becomes more obvious because it's about trying to capture water, avoid flash floods.
Matt: It's about trying to reduce temperatures through tree coverage. It's about trying to store water for the days, you know, in those long, hot sweltering months in the southeast of England and elsewhere. I think we haven't quite made that explicit. I guess that's part of what's happening. I think there's hopefully just a broader acknowledgement that nature is teetering on the balance as well.
Jen: Yeah.
Matt: But yeah, a positive development nonetheless.
Jen: Yeah. I'm interested, so what really stood out for you in 2024?
Matt: So highlights for me. Well, I think I'm going to pull one out that I've probably pulled out in previous years, but I'm going to do it not only because I'm quite a stubborn old mule, but I think it's just worth emphasising that progress is marching on with regards to renewable power.
Matt: If we look at 2023 now, obviously we're talking about 2024, but for listeners who maybe aren't aware, there's always a delay. There's always a lag in terms of data. And typically when we get to 2025, we can look at 2023. And if we look at 2023, the International Energy Agency identified that global annual renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50 percent in 2023.
Matt: 50 percent, which is massive. This is the fastest growth rate in the past two decades. This is the 22nd year in a row that renewable capacity additions have grown.
Jen: Wow.
Matt: In 2023, and this is well worth noting because China gets a lot of bad press about coal power generation, and rightly so, okay, but we have to acknowledge, we have to balance that against the other developments.
Matt: In China, 2023 commissioned as much solar PV as the entire world did in 2022, the year before, whilst its wind additions also grew by 66 percent year on year. I just kind of want to note this, that the cost of it is falling dramatically and continues to do. Capacity grows and they're kind of this amazing feedback cycle.
Matt: The more power we put on the grid, the cheaper it gets, the cheaper it gets, the more power we put on the grid. So we have to set this against much of the rhetoric that we hear from Trump and many other right-wing, anti-climate action commentators. And I want to make this clear because one of the fears we're going to point to, I think, certainly for me, is a Trump presidency.
Matt: We're in a different world to 2016/2017 now. Power is much cheaper from renewables, and I do honestly believe we've reached a tipping point now where it is the go-to type of power. Yes, we've got issues about intermittency and we need to balance that out with reliable, dispatchable, stored power. But this is the reality of where we're at now and it's a very, very positive development.
Jen: Yeah, those numbers really do some talking. I love also the difference between – you’ve come out with a series of numbers; I've gone with the gut about some feelings I had about 2024! But that's really interesting and really important to flag really positive progress. Yes. And I really value showing where we've come from, where we're headed.
Jen: It's not all bleak, right? And 2024 certainly had some, some positive, tangible progress.
Matt: Absolutely. And, and, and I think closer to home, and it's kind of connected to the renewables point, Labour's win was a real big deal in terms of, uh, you know, green economy agenda. I'm not going to dig into the fine detail.
Matt: And there's a previous episode, uh, looking at the manifestos and the past UK general election. But a huge part of it is going really, really big and doubling down on renewable power in the UK. And this is against the backdrop that it's just a sensible thing to do. It really is. And I'm very happy to see this government come out unashamedly and without really making it about subsidy, about “public purse underwriting every step of the way, this extremely eye-wateringly expensive renewable power”.
Matt: No, “this is the way forward”. And they’re, and they're wearing it as a badge of honour. And I think that's really important to see.
Jen: It's a new chapter, and it's a new chapter for 2025 as well, that win.
Matt: It's a new chapter and we're going to dig into a couple of potential hurdles down the tracks in a moment or two. So, so we'll park that one because there's a lot more mileage I think for future episodes too.
[musical flourish]
Matt: So we've had highlights, Jen, but what must follow are the low lights of 2024.
Jen: I mean, I'm sure you struggled to pick out amongst the various low lights of the last year, not wanting to sound such…
Matt: I'm very, I'm very glass-half-full Jen. I dunno what you mean.
Jen: I, I'm an immense optimist and yet it, it sometimes, yeah, it felt like a struggle with 2024. So, right, Matt, what's your lowest low light?
Matt: Okay, well, look, again, I may be stating the obvious, but we have broken 1.5 degrees warming versus pre-industrial levels. We're now 1.6 degrees above this. That is a jump of 0.1 degree versus 2023, which was also a record hot year. So, you know, you don't have to be a mathematician.
Matt: Assuming that trend continues – I'm not saying it will, 0.1 every year, but you know, we're marching in the wrong direction. And you can see, as we record this, the fires are raging in California. Last month or the month before, you know, record flooding in Europe. This is 1.6 degrees. And again, just like I say, don't lose sight of the positive development around renewables.
Matt: Let's not lose sight of what we're doing this podcast for, who we're doing it for, and what it's all about. It's about bringing that temperature rise down to the lowest reasonable increase that we can achieve.
Jen: This actually felt incredibly personal to me, the headlines about 1.5. It was the first headline that I saw after coming back off-grid, um, coming back online.
Jen: I very reluctantly thought I'd better get myself in a space to see the news, see some of the headlines. And it felt incredibly personal because so much of my work has been around meeting the Paris agreement. So when you see those headlines – “we’re at 1.6” – it was very difficult.
Matt: Jen, could I ask, just briefly, given where you are, just, you know, the debate about not climate change more broadly, a very specific question. Is it in Australia, you know, how that 1.6 degree rise, is this, is this being felt across, you know, the nation or certainly the areas that you've been or, or, or do you feel like that the real pain's in the pipeline?
Jen: Oh, the pain's in the pipeline, but it's being felt right now. Absolutely. I mean, think back a couple of years ago to the wildfires and the absolute, it was devastating for the habitats, the carbon sinks, and we're having more mass bleaching events.
Jen: Some species have gone extinct from particular areas. You've got lots of different pressures on ecosystems here and, and climate change is just making that worse. And, and it feels like every environmental issue that you hear about, it's, it's linked in some way to climate change, as well as the kind of deforestation and, and, and extractive industries and so on.
Jen: And I suppose the people that I'm also here to, to meet with and collaborate with over here, they’re all working in the climate change policy space, where there's a lot going on. So it is very much felt and it doesn't always get felt in terms of heat. Sure, we've got rising temperatures, but it's also just weird weather. The weather is being weird. So the climate is changing and people know it.
Matt: Yeah. That lack of predictability is a real challenge. I mean, in so many different ways, but if I'm, you know, tilling the land or if I'm trying to plan for traffic or, um, chart, you know, ferry or whatever it is, as you say, it's not just the average numbers, that, the temperature, it's about the bands of weather rolling in.
Jen: Absolutely. Yeah. Actually, that links to my, my low light of the year, one of the low lights, um, is that we've seen now in 2023 and 2024 a really clear power, like energy needs, peak, with associated kind of pollution surges due to heat waves as well as the cold snaps. And we've seen, yeah, it's year-on-year that we've got actually increased energy demand, increased pollution from those events.
Jen: And that is really distressing when you know what's coming, when you know what's down the line post-1.6, it's only going to get higher, if we can then bring it to safe limits. And I, I'm really concerned about what these climate changes and these extreme weather events mean for the footprint that we leave on this planet and and that, yeah, 2024 was another year when that became very, very clear.
Matt: I mean, absolutely, and wildfires would be a classic example of, of just horrific air quality. Maybe just a note and something I might have thrown in there in the highlights section actually around air pollution, was a fascinating piece I saw from Ed Hawkins who did the climate stripes, which many of you will be familiar with.
Matt: He's basically done, with colleagues, air pollution stripes, and it was really heartwarming, I think, and encouraging to see some of these stripes for major cities – and London being, you know, very close to my heart, uh, was the one I kind of looked at, went back 100 years, and you could really see the progress there in terms of, of air pollution and what we've done, you know, sort of shift away from the most polluting vehicles and what have you. Also fewer open fires.
Matt: But yes, there is the question: if you go into a warmer world, you're with less predictable weather, more wildfires and what have you, where does that leave us? It's even things like when you have, I think the German term is “Dunkelflaut”, where, um, hopefully I've got that right, where you have big kind of blocks of high pressure sitting over the continent and that's where some of the air pollution can become worse.
Matt: So, maybe an episode for the future about what climate change means for air quality and the connection between them. Now, 2024 was also the year of COP 29.
Jen: Yeah.
Matt: You followed this very closely. We did do a bit of a, I can't remember if it was a pre or a debrief, but we definitely covered it.
Jen: It was a pre, a pre-brief.
Matt: A pre-brief, okay. We let the Carbon Brief do the debrief.
Jen: So I remember saying in that that I was going to not follow COP because I've learned from past experience that it's quite stressful to follow. It does not help with climate anxiety. It's very confusing if you're not there. So I didn't follow it. I followed it at the very, very sort of skimming the surface.
Jen: And then I did a very deep dive once it was all done and the dust was settling. And then also had a debriefing webinar, um, on COP 29 and what it means for Article Six, which, the carbon management, in which there was progress. So there was progress at COP29. Despite that, I had COP29 and its outcomes as a low light for the year.
Jen: So it was very disappointing for many, in many, many ways, but there was progress and there was hope. And I do think it's important to acknowledge that. Even if a lot of heavy lifting will be done at future COPs. So that's a low light that sort of is slightly twisted and flipped into a hope.
[musical flourish]
Jen: What are you feeling hopeful about, Matt?
Matt: Yeah. Okay so again, you know, why are we doing this episode now? Because I think when you come into a new year, there is a kind of personal and professional reflection about what the next year holds. I'm very positive about one development from Labour, which is the Local Power Plan. I'm not going to throw around specific numbers of investment.
Matt: Not least because they haven't been quite confirmed yet. Also, I'm not sure how much it would mean to many listeners, but it's a significant chunk. It'll be billions of pounds, low billions of pounds over the course of this government. And what it sets up to do is to support both communities and local authorities to own and operate and develop their own energy projects, specifically renewable electricity projects.
Matt: There will be other forms of energy in different programmes. And in their own words, it's a UK Government statement on this. The plan will give them, i.e. local authorities and communities, give them a stake in the transition to net zero as owners and important stakeholders in local clean power projects.
Matt: They're hoping to roll out quite a significant amount here over the course of the government, about eight gigawatts. So to give you a sense of that, you know, a decent-sized gas power station might be half a gig or a gig. Nuclear power plant might be two or three gig. And we had, in 2023, had about 57 gigawatts of renewable electricity capacity already installed.
Matt: So 57 there, 8 is hoped for. But of that 57 gig that is installed in the UK, 8 gig of that, the same that they're targeting, same amount that they're targeting, is small-scale. So they're roughly looking to double that sort of smaller scale. And so that's really exciting, because I think that would potentially herald a boom or a new revolution in smaller scale renewable electricity projects in the UK, but also those that are either wholly owned by communities or local authorities, partly owned through shared ownership. Now that is very important because that links to our previous episode on shared ownership. So very much worth listeners digging into that.
Jen: Yeah, I guess also, you know, it's very close to home for our research and some of the work that the Institute for Sustainable Communities has been doing around community benefits from these projects and towards community ownership. So we know, like Matt, you know what the benefits that such projects can bring to communities.
Matt: Yes. And also what the barriers are to communities to try and develop these today. So put the money to one side, which is a huge deal, right? Just put it to one side. This programme is also looking at building capacity and capability within these communities to enable them to develop the projects. If you don't have the necessary capital – I'm not talking just financial, but social, political, technical, natural – then it's really difficult to develop these projects.
Matt: Also, you need the necessary capabilities. That might be legal, it might be financial. I mean, speaking with another hat on as a trustee of a charity, you're really leaning hard on the depth and breadth of those expertise and the capacity to employ those expertise at the local level within the community.
Matt: So if you don't have it, then no one's going to develop the project for the community on behalf of the community. So we really need to build that capacity. And I'm very happy to see that included in here.
Jen: Yeah, I guess also because you know, once you build that capacity, it then means you have that capacity to do other incredible things. You've enabled, you've empowered that community. And we've got really great evidence on, on that, like in the stories in the previous episode.
Matt: Yeah. So we have a, an episode forthcoming on this in March, where we'll hold an event on Local Power Plan with Minister Michael Shanks, who's, who's agreed to speak with us, which is great.
Matt: And a couple of other high-profile guests. So we'll, we'll talk a bit more about that at the end. Um, I think I just have one more, uh, what I, you know, is a hope really going forward. And I think one that's borne out by a trend that we're already seeing happen. So a lot of the work you and I do, Jen, is around community engagement, participation, empowering, and enfranchising communities in trying to shape this, net zero transition.
Matt: I think we're now at that point where this is playing out, not just in power, but it's happening in natural capital. It's happening when we're talking about HS2, the high speed rail line. When you're talking transport, you're talking landscape use, you're talking power transmission.
Matt: Communities are at the heart of much of this, and large organisations, not just government, but multinationals who are delivering the projects are aware that they need to connect in with communities. So I think this is the year that we start to see this playing out. It might not play out very well in certain instances.
Matt: And there's a lot to learn. It might go really well if good practice is followed. And I think we just need to keep a watchful eye on this and to ensure that people learn across different subsectors. It's not just an electricity thing. It's not just a heat thing. We need to look across. There's a term we use in sort of business studies, “open innovation”: this notion that it's not a closed book exam and you're able to, to look at each other’s exam script and learn from one another to get the right solution.
Matt: And I think that's what we need to do.
Jen: And that actually kind of slightly speaks to that kind of connected up point that I felt was really key in 2024. I mean, I was talking then about kind of biodiversity and energy. I think if I could have articulated that better, that's about connected up between energy, people, like mobility, homes. It's not just one topic. We're starting to bridge across different topics now.
Matt: Yes.
Jen: So that's, that's much to be hopeful about.
Matt: Yeah. And I think much of the work that we've been involved with is trying to lay some of the groundwork for this through the British Standards Institute.
Matt: Uh, Scottish Government is looking at their own community benefit good practice guidelines. So government and many of those supporting institutes like the British Standards Institute are trying to get the groundwork in place so we know what good practice looks like in terms of engaging with the community.
Matt: So we will report back on that over the coming year, I'm sure. What about you? What are your hopes for 2025?
Jen: You know, I wasn't going to include this one, but just springing off what you're just sharing is that actually there's also a lot of international collaboration, learning and, you know, a lot of international interest in what is happening in the UK.
Jen: Some of the conversations that I've had today is, you know, I'm in the evening now, I've a pretty chunky working day here. And some of that has been around learning from what the UK is doing. And I think that's something to just to highlight as a, as a hope and that we are seeing that kind of looking at each other's exam scripts or whatever you called it, open innovation.
Jen: You can tell I'm not a business, a business studies expert. And I do want to reiterate that I do actually have a lot of hope. I think there's lots to be hopeful about. I'm going to pick up on one of the things that gave me hope recently. And that was really, I found a lot of light in the darkness of December and the shadow of COP29 through the opening of the International Court of Justice, kind of now considering climate change.
Jen: So this whole process for those who are maybe less aware of this, is that the International Court of Justice are looking at the kind of the legal responsibility regarding climate action. So the obligations of states in respect to climate change is the specific phrasing. And to me, this is like, we're looking at the really you know, legal responsibilities.
Jen: And, and that's huge. I mean, I'm really excited that I'm very hopeful of what that will bring. I'm really concerned that the end of 2025, I'll be looking back on this year and saying, “I found the outcomes devastating”, but hopefully this will lead to in the scrutiny on the requirements for countries to act.
Jen: And I think that coupled with being, I feel, at the really kind of pointy end of emission pathways now and pollution reduction, you know, this is following the Paris Agreement, you know, 2015. COP29, we did start, you know, we've seen the Global Stocktake, and whilst there were lots of, it was messy and the long-term low emission reduction kind of scenarios aren't all, you know, very clear. But what we are starting to see and brings me hope is we're seeing much, you know, firmer guidance on how to develop sensible, doable, ambitious emission reduction or pollution reduction pathways. And also really putting a scrutiny on those. And that I find really hopeful, actually, because we're seeing how countries are laying out how they will reach net zero.
Jen: And we're basically now going, well, look, how feasible is that? How does that marry up with other targets? The next COP is a biodiversity and climate COP.
Matt: So let me ask you, Jen, just for the avoidance of doubt, um, some of the cases that are moving through the International Court of Justice, and I'm not suggesting you're as close to this as, as, as, as maybe what we ought to be, what, what do you think could realistically be some of the outcomes from this?
Matt: I mean, what, what is the hope for some of the, the cases that are being brought forward through that and who might it influence? Is it, is it, we're looking at intergovernmental representations or specific national governments? Who will listen to these outcomes, do you think?
Jen: Yeah, that, that I guess remains to be seen, but my hope, the reason why I feel really emboldened by this is because if you are legally obliged, by the International Court of Justice to deliver on climate goals, then that just gives a heft.
Jen: That means you can start prosecuting countries for not delivering on change. That obviously brings a lot of complexity and difficulty around and the onuses on who is most responsible. I'm sure that's all going to be getting discussed as the ICJ kind of examines this, but that's what I find most hopeful.
Jen: And in terms of what that then means, I guess, that would cascade down. We have seen examples of governments laying out plans and then doing very little about it in terms of policy, you know, implementing supportive policies. So perhaps I'm being too hopeful on this, but I, I feel like something like this, putting such scrutiny on the onus and responsibility can only be a really good thing.
Matt: Absolutely. And we should have a good colleague and friend, Francesco Sindico along, uh, who I understand was giving a testimony at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. So maybe that's an episode for the future because you do wonder whether we've shifted the dial hard enough or pushed it hard enough through the justice dimension and through the courts. So I have a lot of hope for that.
[musical flourish]
So, from hope, we now turn to fears. We're not calling this “despair” yet, but we should, we should note a few caveats about, or underscoring our optimism for 2025. So anything in particular that you see on the horizon that gives us cause for concern?
Jen: Many.
Matt: And you only have one. I do jest, I do jest.
Jen: Many things. I mean, I'm smiling, but there are so many things that cause the heart rate, the chest to constrict, the heart rate to go up. And one of the things that I find it very stressful and, and, and I'm really fearing for 2025 is the continued crackdown on climate activism in the UK and further afield.
Jen: That could have become a low light for 2024 for me, but I had to sort of, you know, spread these things out. So to me, that's a real fear for the future is that crackdown continues. And, and slightly related to that is actually to me, I see that some of the underpinning principles of successful democracy, you know, the freedom of speech, equality of participation, you know, if those underpinning principles of democracy are under threat, they are under threat and that's what brings me fear.
Jen: We see weakened democracy, we see weakening of the very principles it rests on and that, that is stressful.
Matt: Yeah, it's a really tough one because I'm going to say the M-word, which is Musk.
Jen: The X-word.
Matt: We'll come to the T-word in a minute. But I think, if you go back to Twitter in the early 2010s or late 2000s and to be honest for much of the 2010s it was, as I was using it and colleagues were using it, as this kind of really interesting nexus between professional, personal, uh, public and private, this I think “town hall” is the best terminology for it, and this exchange of ideas and knowledge. It wasn't perfect, I'm not saying it was, but I, I felt like I learned a lot and I could almost pin the, pin the empiricism on some of these claims, or at least there was in certain quarters, that was the currency. The empiricism was some of the currency.
Matt: Now, as we record, we've just had this week claims from Zuckerberg, Facebook are going to stop fact-checking. I think it's fair to say that X-slash-Twitter stopped doing that many moons ago.
Jen: Yeah.
Matt: So this point to you, Jen, how do we do democracy without facts, without hardcore rock solid knowledge?
Jen: Yeah.
Matt: How do you do climate action through democracy without that?
Jen: I mean that's the million dollar question. It's absolutely killer and, and I, I guess what I would say, I mean, I mean the fears bit but, within this, there are some incredible fact-checking NGOs. There are some amazing organisations who are really pushing, who are holding to account. Um, so it's not that all media is corrupt and wrong.
Matt: And the BBC have done some great fact-checking as well on this. Um, and I think in the lead up to COP, you know, so.
Jen: Facts are also wrong. Facts and figures have an element of uncertainty. So I think that's part of the issue as well, it’s that rhetoric, is that there is a, it's black and white and it never is.
Jen: So I guess we've also got to get much more comfortable with understanding claims and where they might, might have, you know, come from and fact-checking ourselves as well.
Matt: Yeah, I think that's really important. And that's why organisations like the Carbon Brief are so important, to just give that basis. And it's also, let's be honest, why academia and universities have a really important role to play. Whether we’re listened to or not, is a different matter.
Matt: Um, but we, we need to provide the evidence and we need to disseminate that evidence at the right time to the right people in the right way, in the hope that it does inform not just minds, but also hearts. And that's the real challenge.
Jen: Yeah. And when we've seen year-on-year that academics are the most trusted source of information compared to governments or decision-makers or industry.
Matt: Well, that’s something.
Jen: So we do have a responsibility there and we are doing some of that through this, through this pod.
Matt: Well, exactly. Yeah. So, fears. Okay, let's, let's try and keep this light. Well, Trump. Okay. So let's not beat around the bush. We are moving away from a Biden administration, uh, again, imperfect in many ways, but I think through programmes like the Inflation Reduction Act, they really started to turbo-charge investment in low carbon infrastructure and other projects.
Matt: They also reasserted their commitment to the Paris Agreement, but we're going to see, I think, you know, Trump pull out of that and much of the other underpinning institutional infrastructure. There is even claims that he might pull back on the UNFCCC, which is part of the whole kind of COP programme and underpins all of that.
Matt: Not just part of the COP programme, it leads the COP programme, not just climate, for biodiversity, too. Okay, so I think that's baked in. What do we do about it? My hope, attached to this fear, is that the UK works much more closely with the European Union. On this, and this isn't a Brexit, anti-Brexit point, pro or otherwise, I think it's just fact, or what I expect will become fact, is that if you are looking at a more isolationist, nation-first U.S., from a trade perspective alone, I think the U.K. is going to work more closely with the E.U., but also when it comes around to taking climate action, which this Labour government is keen to push, I, you know, Starmer was at COP29 making that case, you look at what's in the manifesto, you look what they're bringing down the tracks. I think you're going to see a more dynamic alignment naturally where you see these kind of shared objectives and they're not being mirrored on the other side of the Atlantic.
Matt: So I think that's an unintended consequence of this situation, that I expect we'll see more of in 2025. This is also sits against, I think, with the Trump presidency, I think there's one thing he and members of his inner circle can't change is the economics of renewable power. I've made this point earlier, and so I don't quite see how you can pull the plug on the Inflation Reduction Act one hundred percent, and the support for renewables, without really hurting big business or some big businesses.
Matt: So that's going to be really interesting, that tightrope, because eventually, renewables are going to become so cheap that they are the obvious solution from an economic standpoint. So there’s two interesting ways this is going to play out this year, I think, and the coming year, but I'm not massively positive about a Trump presidency for climate action, as you can probably pick up.
Jen: No, no. But I didn't put it in my biggest fear because of the, I mean, I'm going to shout out Carbon Brief again, and also The Conversation – there’s been quite good coverage of, I mean, particularly on climate action, there are other things to be utterly terrified about, as well, um, and I don't want to water down the risk of this places on the international agreements, like, as you mentioned, the IPCC.
Jen: So I'm not watering that down. But I think the fact that there is so much momentum, it's difficult for Trump to stop. That means to me that my fear is not at number 11. It’s at, it's maybe down at seven.
Matt: I think, so this brings me onto my second one, which is connected to this, is I don't really fear for the supply side of renewables. I think that's happened. Forget happening, it's happened and it will continue to happen. What I worry about, particularly in the UK, but this is mirrored elsewhere, is that we're just not going anywhere near quickly enough on the demand side for low-carbon solutions. So that might be clean heat, for example, low-carbon food, it might be low-carbon travel.
Matt: Now, these are all solutions and I think I've probably harked on about this plenty in previous episodes, but for the uninitiated, um, to, to my sort of ramblings on this, this is going to be much more difficult in a kind of free market, capitalist, liberal-minded democracy, such as the UK, where the consumer is king and they make decisions.
Matt: And you saw that even in Labour's manifesto, I think they – I’m not quoting verbatim, but, you know, “we won't rip your boiler out”, you know, “if you want to rip out Godspeed and, you know, we'll support you in doing that, but we're not going to make you do it”. So how do you create these centres for new low carbon demand?
Matt: The current stance is here's a carrot, but you know, there's no stick, or the stick is not particularly big or thorny. So we need both, and I don't see the appetite with this government. I don't see that appetite there yet, and I worry. I worry. Why? And I'll very briefly just tie this off, is that I think we'll have a lot of low-carbon electricity ready to be dispatched and not many obvious uses for it.
Jen: Oh, that's interesting because I, so I kind of, I get the carrot and stick analogy, but I also, I guess, speaking as a member of a community cooperative, like, like local home retrofit, I see carrots that are dangled out of reach. It's not that there aren't any sticks. There are people desperate I'm like a guinea pig trying to reach up to the carrot being dangled above its head, right?
Jen: We want to reach it, we want to get there, but there's not the mechanisms to allow us to reach it as well, and I see them as slightly different things. That is something that, that I agree, it does bring concern, um, and I hadn't thought about it in terms of what Labour are doing, but then that's closer to your space.
Matt: I think it's a sort of socio-cultural, socio-political lock-in, where we've locked ourselves into a situation where you cannot tell somebody to do something. There's just seems to be areas that are off-limits and in somebody's home that's a big thing. You know, your home is your castle and all that. The obvious caveat to this has been COVID and the changes that were sweeping and implemented.
Matt: And I did think in some of my lighter moods, probably during lockdown when I was trying to encourage myself to think more optimistically, is that once you open that Pandora's box of state-imposed regulation, on free will, free movement, you can do it for other things. It has to be for the right things and the, but it hasn't seemed to have carried on.
Matt: It's one of the, the legacies of COVID I hoped might be there for climate and I don't think it carried on.
Jen: Yeah. Well, I guess a lot of the, the kind of, in the climate action and climate policy spaces, we've seen some of the watering down of those sorts of, it doesn't feel like a space where we're welcome to talk about it, but I guess things like no boilers in new homes target, that's been pushed back.
Jen: So there has been where you've tried to enforce something in the home, they've been watered down.
Matt: So let me just frame this more positively because everybody likes, you know, a way forward. I don't think it's the end of the world yet. I do think this government and others have a way forward. They need to take the lead in presenting a very compelling vision for a low carbon, low consumption future and emphasise the benefits.
Matt: Now, I've heard this from a couple of quarters, but I think the way to do it with climate is to always frame climate as second, not first. There's another benefit here. Let's talk about that benefit. Before we talk about saving planet Earth, let's talk about a much more closer to home, tangible, obvious, familiar benefit.
Matt: That might be, we've talked about air pollution, it might be cleaner air. It might be, you know, more money in your pocket if you're operating a more energy-efficient home. So there's, there's a whole myriad of benefits. But this requires leadership, and the government needs to provide that alongside business.
Matt: We have a very small window in time to make this happen, and what we cannot do, cannot do in 2025 is offer half measures. So then there needs to be that optimistic, positive framing of the future where climate is part of the benefits, but not the only benefit.
Jen: Yeah. And really careful design of the mechanisms to enable.
Matt: And signalling.
Jen: Yeah.
Matt: So there we go. We've fixed it.
Jen: Pretty chunky fears, pretty chunky fears there.
[musical flourish]
Matt: 2025, Jen, going to be a busy year for us in the pod. So we've got some good news. I think we've kind of made clear before, but we're happy to say that we've funding for the foreseeable so we can carry on the party, can kind of carry on. So that's that's a real positive. And what that means is we can start planning forward.
Matt: We've got some very exciting episodes in the pipeline. One I mentioned before, which will be out in early spring, which is with Minister Michael Shanks and other esteemed guests live event, co-hosted with the British Institute of Energy Economics and also our Institute for Sustainable Communities at Strathclyde.
Matt: So that'll be a live event, a big one, but there's also a few other ideas in the pipeline, no?
Jen: Yeah, I mean, I guess we've covered off quite a few of them in this, in this conversation and I'd be really interested to know the sorts of, you know, just from our conversation today or the thoughts that people have been having prompted by the questions to know what sort of topics our listeners would like to hear about.
Jen: So if you do have ideas, please do send them in. But the things that we've been starting to think about, uh, you know, I would like to do an episode on digital carbon footprint of our daily lives and how to reduce that.
Matt: So for listeners, Jen has told me to stop sending gifts of cats playing pianos because they, the carbon footprint is just not worth it. So that's a New Year's resolution for me.
Jen: That sounds a bit like I'm the fun police there, but um, yeah, so I feel there's a couple of things like we talked to a little bit today, about the wildfires. And I think it'd be interesting to consider kind of community-led, um, what this means for people on the ground in the UK and further afield, and on peri-urban regions in particular.
Jen: We've talked a little bit or the heart, you know, talked towards kind of living with water scarcity as well as abundance like flooding. I'd love to explore activism, you know, climate activism and kind of pro and anti-climate action.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's that that pro and anti one’s really interesting where you've got groups who are maybe anti a particular low-carbon development, but pro another. But yeah, you either provide a platform for activism or you clamp down on it.
Matt: And we've talked about climate literacy in a sort of post-truth age. So if anybody out there, if you're listening and you've got an idea for an episode, Please, please do let us know.
Matt: LinkedIn is a great way to connect and we'll also provide our email details in a moment. But 2025, another busy year. I'm looking forward to what it holds and the episodes we cover off.
[musical flourish]
Jen: Do you have any, you know, nice, positive, hopeful goals for 2025 personally?
Matt: Oh, that's a good one. And it's a good one to have after some of the darkness that we've just uncovered about 2025. Yes, I do. I do. So I'm a keen hill walker, as I know you are too. I'm hoping 2025 is the year that I climb my first Munro, which for the uninitiated are mountains of 914 meters and above – I think I've got that right, Jen, keep me right – with my kids, hopefully both of them. So that's my new year's resolution. What about you?
Jen: I had some quite big ones. And then I was like, “Oh, do you know what? I'll scale it back. I want to focus on the fun”. Some of mine are usually kind of like, you know, a couple of years ago it was to get to the Paps of Jura, you know, a bit like yours. But this year I'm going to keep it quite simple. And I just want to see puffins up-close.
Matt: Well.
Jen: that’s all.
Matt: And I'm not part of the Hebridean tourist board, but you've got to get yourself to Staffa, which is an island off the coast of Mull there. And I saw a couple of years ago, and I honestly, it was like starlings, you know, sort of murmuration of puffins, which isn't the collective term for puffins.
Matt: And um, our colleague Claire Haggett probably knows because she likes puffins and she, I'm sure she knows, uh, the collective term and I can see you Googling that. But anyway.
Jen: Yeah I'm trying to Google it!
Matt: Answers on a postcard. But listen, thank you to our listeners for listening to us at Local Zero. Thank you for kicking off an exciting new year ahead. If you enjoy the podcast, we'd really appreciate it if you could spread the word. Share this episode with someone you think would enjoy it.
Jen: Yeah, we should have said as part of our highlights for Local Zero is our listeners. We've got an incredible loyal listenership. So thank you so much. If you haven't already, please rate Local Zero, wherever you listen to it.
Jen: Follow us on LinkedIn and let us know what you think. And if you listen on Apple podcasts, please leave a quick review to help us reach more like-minded people.
Matt: Absolutely. And finally, a reminder that we want to hear from you, please do reach out to us with your questions, suggestions, or feedback either at localzeropod-at-gmail.com or over on LinkedIn, especially about any potential future episodes.
Jen: Yeah, we're super keen to hear from you, so please do get in touch. And other than that, thank you again and we'll see you next month.
Matt: Bye bye.
Jen: Bye.