We’re not currently doing a lot of ‘avoid’ policies. ‘Avoid’ is policies that prohibit carbon intensive activity. For example: ban cars, ban incandescent light bulbs, ban coal fired power plants. Denmark has been under a moratorium on coal fired power plants since the 1990s. These progressive instruments do exist…These are the types of incentives that you need and we know work, and we have a lot of examples of where they have worked. Feed in tariffs are in 80 countries and renewable portfolio standards are in 75 countries. So, I think that those types of avoid policies are kind of missing.

The ‘shift’ policies are about behavior change. For example: ride sharing if you have a car, using a bicycle instead of a car, eating meat one less day a week, washing your clothes in cold water, eating local food, using a fan instead of air conditioning in the summer. If you, for instance, gave up your car, stopped flying internationally, and became a vegetarian, you would cut your carbon footprint by 80% immediately. And you could do this tomorrow, right? If you want to. Those three simple steps could make a huge difference on the climate.

Then ‘improve’ is technical innovation. We need to continue to make improvements in the technology that we are going to use: bicycles, cars, stoves, furnaces, buildings, windows, etc.. I kind of like that because the ‘avoid’ stuff is all policy, the ‘shift’ stuff is all behavior, and the ‘improve’ stuff is all technology. There's a role for all three.

Of the three policy levers you just discussed, which would you say is the most difficult?

I think they're both difficult. I think the behavioral aspect is difficult for us consumers and I think the ‘avoid’ aspect is the one that's the most difficult for politicians…The challenge of climate change is that it requires politicians to make costs in the present for gains in the future. They would far, far, far better like costs in the future for gains in the present. So, it really splits the political logic of how even democracies operate.

Have you directly worked with policy-maker's toward a shift in climate change policies?

I was a Lead Author for Chapter 4 of the IPCC Report. Chapter 4 has a section about subnational actors. Subnational actors are a proxy for non-conventional actors. These are industry corporations that band together into trade groups or cities or other initiatives like within forestry or buildings or the IEA has a few of these kinds of just global initiatives that operate independently of the nation state.

And what we found is, these subnational actors are moving so quickly to address climate change that by the year 2030, they will actually save more carbon than the Paris Accord. The Paris Accord is operating under the political system and you have the Nationally Determined Contribution. So it's close. These sub-national actors and their initiatives are like a few tons saved more than the Paris Accord. But that's shocking. They're taking it seriously, and they're not waiting for states to sort themselves out. They're going now because it's good for business or because they realize it's a climate emergency and we cannot be too late. So there's your inspiration as slow as it takes the US Congress to decide things, others have said enough, we're not even going to work with that system anymore, we'll do it on our own.

What kind of radical/transformational community based, local initiatives do you know about that address the climate crisis?

You have people who talk about civil disobedience, you have people who talk about eco-anarchy, and you have people who talk about insurrection and guerilla warfare. We go through a hundred years of tactics that all of these social movements have used and it's things like boycotts, sit-ins, protests. There is also what's called intelligent sabotage where they'll disrupt direct action techniques that disrupt strikes: hunger strikes, labor strikes. I think many of those are very inspiring. You've got people willing to go to jail and get mass arrested to make a statement.

There are some very inspiring movements like the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for the Future, and Extinction Rebellion, that are really pushing the envelope. There's one in the UK called Insulate Britain, where every now and then, they get arrested for closing down the highways around London…What they're after is just adequate housing standards after Grenfell Tower. In the UK, about five years ago, there was a horrific accident where a low income housing block burnt down. It burnt down because of floor cladding, and the cladding was for energy efficiency. So, it was basically like someone messed up the energy efficiency upgrade and it killed about 40 people. And after that accident happened, everyone promised ‘oh, we're gonna properly insulate British buildings,’ and they never did. So, these protesters are willing to risk their lives. Walking into a highway and trying to get people to slow down and stop and then get arrested just to hold the government to its previous obligations.

I think in these types of movements – the self-sacrifice and bravery are very, very compelling. And so many of them around the world, France, Spain, the UK, the US, Canada, etc. People are getting frustrated and they're starting to take action. And if you look at the history of where we've had major changes in our country: Slavery, Women Suffrage, the Temperance Movement, Women's Reproductive Freedom…All four of those were not the result from policy, and they were not the result of science. They were the result of sustained social movements, Civil Rights is the first one– the Civil Rights Act. So it really does tell us that if you want rapid social change, policy and science are never, historically, the way we do it. You do it by rising up and doing sustained protest.

How do you envision the future and the growth of renewable energy worldwide?

If you look at the projections…There is a massive shift going on in the next 30 to 40 years. There's a shift in population growth, a shift in energy consumption, and a shift in emissions. It's something like 80% of future growth in energy demand will be in developing countries. And something like 90% of future emissions will also be in developing countries. So in a way the problem isn't so much of the United States in the European Union. It is a problem of China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and all of the other rapidly developing states – Indonesia as well, because they have such high rates of deforestation. So future markets, it's a geopolitical shift. And I think there's the most money to be made and the most investments you occur won't even be here. It'll be in those very rapidly growing markets.

I do think that China’s plan is eventually to replace all of that with renewables but I think we're talking mid-century, we're talking 2050. And there's an expectation in China that they shouldn't have to go any faster, because it's not their fault that we have climate change. Because historically, the US and Europe are responsible for about 90% of the emissions that have caused climate change. They're like, we have the right to develop just like you did. We have the right to use these fossil fuels to the same state of economic modernization and we can then plot one from in the century to be low carbon. So I think they definitely have a plan but it's not fast enough to stop climate change because they want to put that burden of responsibility on us.

What type of projects are you working on?

One stream of work is on creating a Net Zero Industrial Base. So we have a project called the Industrial Decarbonization Innovation and Research Center, and it is all about how to create net zero, completely decarbonized, industrial production. These are all the really difficult things like steel, concrete, cement, beverages, refining, chemicals, paper and so on. And so that's very applied and we're working with 80 industries to develop a net zero supply chain.

The other one is Plan C of Climate Action. Most climate change policy is focused on mitigation, which is stopping emissions or adaptation, which is building resilience to the impacts of climate change. We have a really neat project that says: what if each of those fail and we have to do the really radical stuff? What about stratospheric aerosol injection, marine cloud brightening, sun shades, enhanced weathering, direct air capture, biochar, or ocean fertilization. So we're looking at these very radical changes as well, in a project called the Governance of Negative Emissions Technologies in Europe.

We are huge fans of dinosaurs here, so much so that we have a replica raptor skeleton in our lobby. So we would like to ask, what is your favorite dinosaur and why?