Cool heads needed: COP26 begins

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Patrick Lane, filling in for Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Selling sex is illegal almost everywhere in America, but a growing body of opinion wants it decriminalized. And the law may soon change in New York. How might it be done? And demand for classy TV programs has boomed during the pandemic to entertain the SOFA bound millions. And it's meant a bonanza for Britain's filmmaking industry in particular. But first.

When do we want it? Now. What do we want? Climate justice.

This is a crucial fortnight for the future of the world. Leaders from around 200 countries have gathered in Glasgow for the UN Climate Summit COP26. They'll be asked for their plans to cut emissions by 2030.

Quite literally, it is the last chance saloon.

Britain's Prince Charles called on them to set aside their differences to save the planet.

We must now translate fine words into still finer actions.

Among those attending are America's President Biden and France's President Macron. But there are notable absentees too. President Xi of China, the world's greatest greenhouse gas emitter, will not be there in person, but he will address the summit by video link. And the event got off to an inauspicious start. After A weekend gathering of the G20 group of big economies failed to agree on any binding measures to reduce emissions.

Russia and China basically didn't show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change.

But leaders need to find a way through the disagreement. There couldn't be more at stake.

The main reason this chaotic COP process matters is that the science, the diplomacy, the activism, the public opinion that surrounds it, despite all of its messiness and frustrations, is actually the best mechanism the world has to come to terms with a fundamental truth.

Vijay Vaitheeswaran is our Global Energy and Climate Innovation editor and hosts, to a lesser degree, our sister podcast on tackling climate change.

And that is the dream of 8 billion people living in material comfort will be unachievable if extreme climate change is not halted.

And what's on the COP26 agenda at the highest level?

What we're talking about is what is the level of ambition the world's nearly 200 countries that will come together, the ambition we have for taking on extreme climate change? And are we ready to put some meat on the bones that were originally envisioned at the earlier Paris summit about six years ago when the world got serious for the first time about this? So not just platitudes and not airy fairy talk about 2050 or 2060, you know, decades hence, but what are concrete policies? How much money is on the table? What kind of tough cuts in emissions are countries ready to commit to? And can we agree on at this.

Gathering, what are the climate strategies needed to meet the Paris targets?

I think there are really three planks that are absolutely vital. The one that tends to be in the news is cutting emissions, right? It seems pretty obvious if we are emitting far too many greenhouse gases, this is particularly from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, but also from the ways that we use land. Agriculture, for example, beef in particular, is very intensive. So cut emissions is the first step. Second, we need to transform our energy system and industrial systems away from dirty forms of energy and towards something like renewables, green electricity based power, transport, heating for our homes. And that's a second pillar that is investing in those clean technologies. And third, we need to invent the new, that is research, development and scale up of technologies for negative emissions, in effect sucking carbon out of the air and sequestering it in the ground if we're going to maintain that climate stability and meet the goals of the Paris Accord.

And of all the countries taking part in this summit, who are the key players to watch?

Europe will fly the green flag as Always continental. Europe is the part of the world that is furthest ahead with concrete action on climate. And in pushing the world to embrace more ambitious targets, Britain, of course, is the host. And so we'll try to push hard to get more ambition out of everyone who's attending. But the elephant in the room is China, the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter. So far, its climate plans have not been adequately ambitious. America is an interesting country to watch because it has been a bit of a bad boy under Donald Trump walking out of the negotiations. President Joe Biden brought it back into the international negotiations, but he doesn't have a plan yet. His Democrats in Congress look like they're about to agree. An ambitious climate plan. They gave him a bit of a support before he got on the plane to go to Europe, but that deal could fall apart.

And do any of the other countries have a really significant role to play?

The wild card in some ways is India, and that's because India burns massive amounts of coal. It has the potential in the next 50 years to be a bigger greenhouse gas contributor than many other countries, possibly even China. But India does not take this seriously in the way that China does for a couple of reasons. India has a philosophical objection, arguing that this is a problem that was largely created by the west, that is the industrializing countries. They should solve it. And India will continue to use its resources, including coal, to develop its own economy. And of course, India has a lot of poor people. That is the mandate for economic growth, the necessity for poverty alleviation. And so the moral case is put forward by India for not taking on binding targets or straightjacket their growth. And that creates a problem.

Now we see a lot of summits, and it's easy to be cynical about them. Is a summit really the best way to get this sort of agreement, or is there a better way of doing it?

This is a terrible process. Imagine trying to get 200 countries to agree on anything, never mind something that could actually, in the case of a country like Saudi Arabia, mean there is no future for its main product, oil. Even a very democratic country, one that's quite rich, like Australia, one that's going to be affected by climate change in very important ways, which we're already beginning to see, is refusing to put forward a serious climate plan because it would affect the coal industries. And that's just one country. Imagine all of the emerging markets where they have far fewer resources and are reliant on old coal plants that are pretty cheap to run. It's going to be much more Difficult to bring them along as well. Unless, as promised, the rich world offers significant amount of money to pay for this. And that's part of what's going to be negotiated as well in Glasgow is how much money will the rich world contribute? It has been promised something on the tune of $100 million a year. Those commitments need to be kept because they have so far not been kept. As well as using that as a way of ceding trillions of dollars from the private sector. That's really what we need to see, a clean energy revolution.

Let's look ahead a fortnight to the end of the summit. What would a successful outcome look like?

A successful outcome in Glasgow would involve, first of all, all the countries staying till the end. Nobody was storming out, as has happened previously several times. Usually it's the United States or small cabals of countries representing fossil fuel interests, for example, blocking action on anything. That's also happened at several COP summits. So if we're able to find some form of global agreement that's able to make progress on significant, mandatory and meaningful steps forward on emissions cuts, on transfers of resources from rich countries to poor to help with that green trans we've talked about to get off of coal, for example, retiring coal plants earlier than they might be otherwise, while making sure that the countries don't go bankrupt in the process or the utilities in those countries that would be good for the entire world to see that kind of involvement. And finally, of course, it's to have a plan to go forward to the next COP and the next five COPS to see how do we ratchet the ambition? This is really not about a one shot wonder. We will not solve the problems in Glasgow in the next two weeks. But it's about maintaining that level of ambition, getting concrete and turning the ratchet so that we are continuing to increase pressure on countries to do the right thing and move towards tackling extreme climate change, knowing that this is a politically pernicious problem.

And the latest episode of To a Lesser Degree is out today.

Yes, that's right. I invite all our intelligence listeners to join us. I'll be speaking with America's special climate envoy, John Kerry, about his expectations for the summit at Glasgow.

I believe we have the opportunity to come together with the largest increase in.

Ambition that has ever been produced with respect to the climate crisis as well. My colleague Oliver Morton, Katrine Brahek and I will delve deep into what makes COPS so frustrating. And we've all amongst us attended multiple COPS and yet so important at the same time. And careful listeners might also find out why soap operas might hold the key to solving climate change.

Well, I'll be sure to listen to it. Vijay, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Earlier this year, the Manhattan District Attorney's office said it would stop prosecuting prostitution and dismissed 900 cases dating back to the 1970s. But buyers of sex there can still be charged. Similar moves are now afoot in other New York boroughs and also in Baltimore. It's part of a growing movement in the United States to reform the laws around sex work. But quite how to do that is not straightforward.

Sex work or prostitution is basically illegal in America, apart from in a few counties in Nevada where it's heavily regulated in licensed brothels.

Me and Ridge writes about the United States for the Economist.

But there's a growing opinion that prosecuting sex workers doesn't help anyone. Criminal records, particularly for sex crimes, prevent people from finding housing and alternative forms of employment, and especially for mothers. Because the vast majority of sex workers are women, the fear of having their children taken away from them can prevent them from accessing health care and other services.

And so what sort of reforms to those laws are people considering?

In America, as elsewhere in the world, there are two broad approaches. One is full decriminalization, which is making both the buying and the selling of sex legal. The other is partial decriminalisation, and that is based on a law passed in Sweden and subsequently adopted by some other European countries that basically repeals the crime of prostitution but keeps penalties for people who buy sex in America. For a while, there's been a movement to partially or fully decriminalise sex work, and a few states have introduced bills. Probably the one that is most likely to pass one is New York, and that currently has two conflicting bills in the state legislature, one for partial decriminalisation, one for full.

Meehan, just considering what you call the Swedish model, or the sort of Nordic model, as it's sometimes called, what are the arguments for that partial decriminalisation?

The strong argument for the Nordic model is that fully decriminalising sex work pushes up demand, because some would be buyers are prevented from buying sex by the fact that they'd be breaking the law. And so if you decriminalize, demand goes up. And the problem is not so much that, but the supply side. According to proponents of the Nordic model, women with equal economic opportunities and possibilities of other jobs tend not to choose to sell sex work. So it's going to fall to more unfortunate women, some of whom will be trafficked to Fill that gap and provide the supply.

So that's the Swedish approach to the challenge. What arguments do those who support full decriminalisation make?

It slightly depends which law is passed. But the main argument for full decriminalization is that if you keep buying as an offence, it will be very difficult for sex workers to report crimes against them. Why would they report a crime, A, against people who are paying them to work, and B, why would they report a crime in which they're a part of the transaction which is partially illegal, even if their part of it isn't? Former sex workers have told me that they're afraid that if it's partially decriminalised, they would continue to be arrested and subjected to mistreatment by the police. There's also an argument that it makes it easier to access healthcare, particularly sort of services that provide protection against sexually transmitted disease, to force buyers to use condoms, for example. And in turn, they say that it would make it easier to report sex trafficking. And there's quite a lot of research that suggests that relationships with the police do improve with sex workers once full decriminalization is implemented.

Do we have a sense of what the majority of sex workers think?

Well, one of the reasons this is quite a difficult issue to report is that there have been no big wide scale surveys of sex workers. And this is a group that's extremely diverse. So I think it's difficult for any activist or any side of this debate that's happening in America and has happened in other parts of the world to convincingly say that they speak for a majority of sex workers. So on the one side, you have people saying sex work is always inherently harmful and abusive, and I don't think that that represents the whole story. On the other side, activists of full decriminalisation often argue that sex work should be regarded as any other form of employment. But I think that there are ways in which sex work is different from any other form of employment. One of them is that lots of sex workers have entered sex work because they're homeless or because they're addicted to drug. Those two things generally preclude other forms of employment, but they don't stop people from becoming prostitutes or sex workers. The other is that this is a market which has an unusual demand for youth. And I think that's something policymakers have to recognise. Lots of sex workers begin doing this work when they're under 18, which is obviously a big problem.

So looking at the politics of this, Meehan, with these competing reforms you've got in New York what do you think's going to happen?

This is going to play out a bit like ideological debate between the two extremes. But in fact, I think that policymakers are going to think about the effects on the ground, the sort of practical ramifications of passing these laws. They're going to think about things like, if you decriminalise fully in one state, does that mean that that state will become a hotspot for sex tourism? People will travel from other states where it's illegal to buy sex in that state. Also, you need to think about the way that the law, and obviously it depends how the law is written, but how it'll affect things like the way that sex traffickers and men who abuse women will be affected. For example, in New York, it's been argued that sex traffickers are often prosecuted by using laws against promoting prostitution because often victims of trafficking don't want to testify. So they use these promoting laws instead to go after the traffickers. And if they passed a law that fully decriminalised, that would then become impossible. So the Nordic model offers a staggered approach to reforming the laws and it may have more advantages than that. But I think whatever happens, it's going to be some sort of experiment in one state and everyone else is going to be seeing how it goes. So New York may turn out to be a bellwether in the reform of sex work laws.

Meehan, thank you very much.

Thank you.

To keep us all entertained during the pandemic and beyond, streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon prime have been churning out huge quantities of content.

Jesus.

He gives the worst pep talks.

He really, really does.

The demand for high end film and television production has never been higher, and one country in particular has been reaping the rewards.

Britain is undergoing a film production boom, or more accurately, a high end TV production boom.

Elliot Keim is a Britain Corporation correspondent with the Economist.

Spending on high end TV in the UK has more than tripled since 2017, according to the British Film Institute. And Netflix says Britain is now its third biggest production site after America and Canada.

So, Elliot, why is Britain the destination for this stuff?

Well, there's many things that film producers point to, you know, Britain having a global language and a deep talent pool. But apart from that, we also have ratcheted up tax incentives to draw in filmmakers. So some production companies are now able to claim up to 180% of their actual spending against tax. And if that results in an overall loss, they can take 25% of it as cash. These sweeteners extend even to small Productions or segments of work. And on top of all this, last October, the government launched a scheme to spend 500 million pounds encouraging film and television production to restart as the pandemic eased.

So the government's really shelling out here, or rather not collecting quite a lot of money. What's in it for them?

Well, Boris Johnson said recently that he wanted Britain to level up and this influx of production companies should inject some of these high skilled jobs he's spoken so glowingly about. And on a regional level, politicians hope new studios will increase employment as cash flows out from film sets into hotels, catering and restaurants. Game of Thrones contributed more than 50 million pounds to Northern Ireland's economy in 2018 alone.

Whenever the Crown needs money, he rubs his hands together and poof. Mountains of gold.

And many of these production sets now run apprenticeship schemes for local youths, which is great for encouraging diversity in the arts. These generous tax breaks mean any new jobs will come at considerable cost to the treasury, but at least more of them will be going to where they are most needed.

And production studios are taking advantage of all these perks.

Absolutely. There's a massive scramble for studio space going on at the moment. Netflix productions like Good Omens.

You don't get tornadoes in England, we do it today.

That had previously been shot in multiple locations around the world, from South Africa to lots of lovely little villages across southern England, are now being exclusively filmed in Scotland. Studios are being booked out for years and new ones are being built. Last month, Sunset Studios, a Hollywood based company, said it would be spending? 700 million on a new studio in Hertfordshire. And it's not just the southeast that's benefiting from this, which is usually where the film production types like to congregate even more. Incentives from local film bodies have drawn streaming services to cities in the north of England, to places like Yorkshire, and to Scotland and Northern Ireland.

That means plenty of things are coming out that will have been shot entirely within Britain. Anything I would know? What should I look out for?

We've got the School for Good and Evil, which is by Amazon, who are also doing Good Omens. And we'll be filming Anansi Boys, another adaptation from the Neil Gaiman back catalogue, which will also be filmed entirely in Scotland. But I guess the biggest scout for the UK film industry, which you may find exciting, is the Lord of the Rings franchise, the ones that really matter.

Full of darkness and danger they were.

In August, Amazon announced that the second season of its prequel series will be shot in Britain. After two decades in which Middle Earth meant New Zealand and everyone is rather excited to find out where they are going to shoot. So this means old industrial parts of major cities are being transformed into massive studio complex. These new studios are going to really be leading the next generation of British filmmaking. And with them, the industry's future looks particularly bright.

Elliot, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you very much.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@examiner.com intelligenceoffer See you back here tomorrow.