Taking the temperature: a climate chat with the UN chief

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. For four years, the far right in the Netherlands has had a new party headed by a charmingly old fashioned populist named Thierry Beaudet. Now, after a series of scandals, the Forum for Democracy party has imploded. We examine the wreckage and Airbnb made a stellar debut on the stock market yesterday, even after an unsurprisingly lackluster year for many of its hosts. But not all of them. We analyze thousands of reviews to reveal what those who have been booking are looking for. But first, Tomorrow marks five years since 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement. Among the signatories was America's then Secretary of State John Kerry.

I am reminded of Nelson Mandela's very.

Simple words, it always seems impossible until it is done. And while it isn't done yet, today we are on the march.

The pact aims to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels. And while America left the agreement under President Trump, President elect Joe Biden has renewed the country's commitment to it. This weekend, world leaders are gathering for a summit to assess the treaty's progress and take further action before a major conference in Glasgow next year.

Hello Mr. Secretary General, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me.

Katrine Braeg is our Environment editor and has been speaking to Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, ahead of the weekend meeting.

Very nice to have this opportunity as a permanent reader of your magazine.

Like pretty much every meeting of the last nine months, we met virtually and the context of our conversation was really the build up to the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement on 12 December 2015. And to mark that occasion, the UK, the UN, France are hosting a virtual Climate Ambition summit at which they are really hoping that governments from around the world are going to come forth with their best possible pledges to slash emissions.

And so what did you and Mr. Guterres talk about?

So we discussed how much progress has been made in the last five years. And I asked him basically how pessimistic or hopeful he feels going into this weekend's virtual summit and next year, the next big step in the global, hopefully, physical climate talks.

We are still moving in the wrong direction, but there is indeed a new hope moving in the wrong direction, because if you look at all the indicators, it's clear that climate change is moving faster than what we are. But there is hope and there is hope.

Why?

Because the scientists have told us that to limit the temperature growth to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century, we would need to be carbon neutral in 2050, net zero emissions in 2050. We have now the UK and the European Union committed. We have now Japan and Korea committed. We have the Biden administration expressing that that commitment will be put in place. We have the Chinese committed to NET 0 before 2060, which means that now we have 65% of the world emissions with a net zero commitment. And that is new and that is very important.

So Mr. Guterres mentioned there the incoming Biden administration. How crucial do you think Mr. Biden's climate change commitments are to the overall success of the Paris agreement?

I think Mr. Biden's presidency is essential. It tips the global balance towards one where climate is essential to the leading powers. And certainly in our discussion, Mr. Guterres seemed very pleased, in particular with his choice of John Kerry as climate envoy.

I am extremely hopeful because the new administration has decided to have a structural change in its decision making process with John Kerry that demonstrates that this is indeed a fundamental priority for the new administration. And so I believe that there won't be only a shift in relation to the past. There will be the will to assume a global leadership. That, of course, makes a lot of difference in relation to the international community as a whole.

And what does he think? The west, and America in particular, need.

To do a few things. I mean, really going into this weekend summit, what we're looking for is increased ambition. And that means increased better, bigger, stronger pledges to cut emissions faster. But Mr. Guterres also mentioned what is very important, which is a support for developing countries on their path towards decarbonization, support for them in their attempts to adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change and financing.

We need to see ambition in relation to mitigation. And that has to do with the net zero commitment. We need to see Ambition in relation to finance, and to have the US being part of the commitment of the $100 billion per year provided by the developed world, also a commitment to developing world in adaptation. I mean, the US is in itself suffering already enough with climate change impacts to be fully aware of the need that not only we need to reduce emissions, but we need to increase the resilience of societies, because the impacts of climate change are already there and they're having devastating consequences.

So given all of this, and it feels like a question I've asked you in the past and doubtless will ask again when it gets right down to it, is the 1 1/2 degree target, the ambitious target of the Paris Agreement, possible?

So I think if you really press climate analysts, most people would admit that the 1.5 degrees target, the hard end of the Paris Agreement, is very, very hard indeed and unlikely, I'd say, to be met. Everything's possible and there are ways of doing that, including calling upon very, very controversial solutions like solar geoengineering that would bounce the sun's energy back out into space before it is contribute to global warming. So these sorts of technologies are very hypothetical and some people think we should never draw upon them at all. So we discussed that and we also discussed the viability of the 1.5 degrees target.

I don't think we should exclude anything. But one thing for me is clear, it's not the moment to give up on the 1.5 degrees. If we have net zero in 2050 will get to 1.5 degrees. It's not the moment to give up.

So you don't believe in solar geoengineering? You don't think it's something we should?

I have nothing against the fact that people try to find solutions in that regard. Like we say in my country, it's better to have a bird in our hand than two birds flying. And for the moment, we need to work with the bird that we can have on our hands. If the other birds will fly, fine, we'll see it afterwards. But for the moment, net zero with what we have or what we plan.

To have, I mean, regardless of what kind of technological development we're going to have to throw at this, this is an enormous task. Did you get a sense from Mr. Guterres how optimistic he really was? How much he's being optimistic? For the purposes of interviews like yours?

Yeah, look, that's an excellent question. And the reality is it's his job to tread a very fine line between optimism and telling off governments for not doing enough. It has been the job of Secretaries General for decades to do this. He, when we spoke earlier this week, was clearly feeling quite optimistic. He has reason to feel optimistic. I genuinely think that the movement of the last 12 months has been remarkable, both in terms of the popular desire and the voter support for solutions to climate change, the changes in the financial and the private sectors. But I also have no doubt that at some point in the future, he and the rest of us will be feeling pessimistic again. It's going to be a long roller coaster ride.

Katrine, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you Jason.

For more conversations with the people shaping policy and politics all over the world, take out a subscription to the Economist. Get a great introductory deal@Equality.com IntelligenceOffer the link is in the show Notes. Last year Thierry Beaudet led the far right Freedom for Democracy party to the top of the polls in the Netherlands. His charisma helped the party to win the largest vote share in provincial elections. But public support for Mr. Beaudet has been steadily declining, leading to questions about his party's future.

Thierry Beaudet plays Chopin on the piano.

Matt Steinglass is our Europe correspondent.

He attempted to give his opening speech at the Dutch parliament Latin Latin, quo.

Usque ver tandem factionem cartelum et officiorum machina.

And when his party finished first in the provincial elections in 2019, in his victory speech he presented it as a world historical event which he compared to Hegel's owl of Minerva, the elf on Minerva spreits in Flocels beit falle van.

Der avant and it geld nidderleen vor.

De se aavond, which is a symbol of wisdom who spreads her wings only at dusk.

Okay, he sounds a bit from another century. I mean, how did he come to lead the party?

He initially came to prominence with a doctoral thesis attacking the eu, and he's well known in Euro skeptical intellectual circles. So he has pretensions to represent an intellectual elite layer of Dutch society which previously had not thought of itself as belonging on the nationalist populist spectrum. And a lot of the young people who were attracted to his party were attracted because it projected that image of debonair, cosmopolitan, urbane opposition to Europe rather than the kind of working class opposition to Europe that other right wing populist parties presented.

But it seems Mr. Beaudet's party has not been doing so well recently.

There have been long standing worries inside Thierry Beaudet's Forum for Democracy party about anti Semitism and conspiratorial thinking Particularly in the youth wing of the party. There was a meeting over dinner of party bigwigs last month at which all this came to a head. First of all, Mr. Beaudet insisted on playing classical music, while one of the other politicians there wanted to play 1980s disco. They got into an argument and fairly quickly. According to an FVD senator who later Left the party, Mr. Beaudet was ranting that COVID 19 was a plot by George Soros. She said they should address the worries about antisemitism. He said, almost everyone I know is anti Semitic. It got even worse the next morning when a newspaper in Amsterdam published chats full of racist and anti Semitic vitriol among members of Fed's youth wing, which is run by an ally of Mr. Beaudet named Frank Janssen. Mr. Beaudet did not want to fire Mr. Johnson, so instead he announced that he was quitting as parliamentary leader.

And so what does that mean for the party now?

Well, he announced that he was quitting as parliamentary leader. Then he said that he was going to run again for leader of the party if the members wanted him to do so. As expected, Mr. Beaudet won the referendum. That made it clear to everybody in the party who was losing faith with him that there was no future for them inside the party, and they all began quitting. Entire local factions of the party in various provinces around the country have now left the party. Most of the party's senators have left. Mr. Beaudet is one of the party's two MPs. The other MP quit, and the popular level of support for the party, which had already fallen dramatically to about 3%, has probably suffered as well.

So if that support has plummeted so much, then why did he get voted back in?

Fed is a far right populist party, and those parties tend to have high levels of personal loyalty and personal support. So for most of the members of this party, Mr. Beaudet is the party. That was one of the reasons why people left. The party has always kind of flirted with extremist notions, and that's been one of the reasons why people came to support it. Mr. Beaudet talked in his victory speech after the 2019 provincial elections about the importance of European civilization's boreal world.

Net aus all die Andrelande vernunse boreale wirud kapotk.

It's a reference to the sort of northern roots of Europe and a dog whistle racist reference to the whiteness of European culture. And in the past he's always been able to sort of dodge around some of the more upsetting, negative, disturbing connotations of the language he was using. This scandal has made it impossible for him to dodge those connotations.

So what do you think the demise of the Freedom for Democracy party means for far right politics more generally in the Netherlands?

When Thierry Beaudet debuted this party in 2016, what people expected him to do was to fill a hole, a perceived hole between the right wing mainstream parties that run the country and the existing far right party of Geert Wilders, the Party for Freedom. That party is an anti Muslim, anti immigrant far right party that never participates in government. And there was a notion that you could start a far right party that was still intelligent and acceptable enough to eventually participate in government. Over the course of the last six months, since COVID 19 arrived and since Thierry Beaudet started embracing conspiratorial COVID 19 skeptical theories, his party's support has melted away. And basically all of that support has gone from his party to the traditional far right party of Geert Wilders. So there still is a far right option in the Netherlands. It's just that it's the same old far right, anti Muslim party that they had beforehand, and this new alternative which Bodet seems to have created, has now evaporated.

Matt, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

Airbnb made its stock market debut on the Nasdaq yesterday to the ringing of doorbells around. By the end of the day, share prices had more than doubled, giving Airbnb a market value of more than $100 billion.

Airbnb has handed about $54 billion worth of value to investors who got in at its $68 IPO price announced it.

Caps off a difficult year for the company, which had initially been badly hurt by the pandemic. But Airbnb's model proved airtight as more people looked to escape to rentals closer to home.

We started Airbnb as a way to pay our rent. It was 2007, a design conference was coming to town, and all the hotels are sold out. We decided to inflate a few airbeds and turned our apartment into an air bed and breakfast.

As co founder and chief executive Brian Chesky reminisced about the company's early days, he also thanked the more than 4 million hosts who power the platform.

Behind every home is a host, and hosts are what make Airbnb special. And hosting has always been at the center of Airbnb from that very first weekend.

But not all of those hosts have been profiting from the new pandemic reality.

Even where lockdown restrictions have been lifted, not all Airbnb hosts have seen bookings return, which is understandable in a pandemic.

Beau Franklin has been editing the Economist's daily chart.

But researchers at the University of Nevada Reno and Clemson University, Both in the U.S. hypothesized that this might be down in part to the cleanliness of the properties themselves.

Well, how do you test such a hypothesis?

They examined booking data on about six and a half thousand properties listed on Airbnb in Austin in Texas between July 2018 and July this year. Austin's a really good place to look at because it's one of the few cities in America where travel restrictions weren't put in place throughout the whole of the pandemic. So any impact on demand for Airbnb properties will be down to travellers and guests preferences rather than the authorities stopping people from going there. They used an algorithm to scrape lots of reviews and compile a list of words that were associated with cleanliness or dirtiness. And then they used this kind of cleanliness dictionary to assess the properties in Austin, and each one was deemed to either be perceived as clean if enough reviewers described it as clean, or not perceived as clean.

And what did they find?

They found that the immediate effect of COVID 19 on the rental market in Austin was pretty drastic. The number of listings on Airbnb dropped by about a quarter at the start of the pandemic. And for those that were still on the site, hosts income and occupancy rates fell by around 20%, just over that. But this is where clean properties and those not described as clean started to diverge, because the properties that were reviewed as clean recovered a lot of that deficit over the summer. And by July, average income per clean property was even a little bit higher than it was the year before. But the properties not described as clean didn't really recover from the initial drop. So clean properties lost around $35 per month between March and July, which isn't insignificant, but it's not the end of the world for the hosts. Whereas those that weren't reviewed as clean lost about $167 a month. And the authors attribute this to a bigger market share for the hygienic properties.

But there is kind of a baseline cleanliness that Airbnb imposes anyway, right?

There is. You want to know that your host is at least doing something, rather than just dusting off the odd surface. Airbnb clearly knows that during a pandemic, especially, cleanliness is next to confidence for guests. And since October, around the world and earlier in lots of countries, it's made hosts adhere to an especially strict cleaning regime, and that includes things like using the types of disinfectants that Airbnb approves. But hosts who might see this as extra expense and extra effort and don't necessarily want to go the extra mile, should know that, according to this research, at least, it does pay to put in the elbow grease and clean up your properties.

Bo, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here on Monday.

Sam.