Dr. Tzeporah Berman: "We Crossed The 1.5°C Global Warming Tipping Point."

When pollution gets trapped in our atmosphere, it causes almost a blanket that smothers the Earth. Because of that blanket, we now have a dramatic increase in extreme weather: floods, fires, droughts, and lethal heat. Lethal heat alone killed 5 million people on the planet last year because they had nowhere to go for their bodies to cool down.

Oh my God.

There were points last year that were so hot, the hottest ever recorded in human history. If we continue to get hotter past 1.5 degrees, that means Millions more people will die. That means there'll be a lot less food and food will become more expensive. It means that some areas of the planet will get to be unlivable. And so it all comes down to, are we using more fossil fuels or not? And are we producing more or not? And what I realized is that our governments are only constraining emissions, but they're not regulating how much fossil fuels are built. And that's because every government and every country knows we need to use less. But they all want to be the last barrel sold because they're making billions in profits. This is the moment when we need all hands on deck. And whether or not you can do it full-time or whether you can just do a couple hours a week. In Maui this year, people had to just run and jump into the ocean. So imagine you're just sitting in your apartment and all of a sudden everything's on flames around you.

Welcome to the Driving Impact Podcast, where we speak with leading experts about the most pressing topics of our time. We are excited to have you join us as we dig deep into bold innovations and ideas from today's leading scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and changemakers from diverse fields. I am Katheline Jean-Pierre, your host, who will guide you on this journey. Hello, Driving Impact Hive. I'm so excited to welcome our next guest. Her name is Dr. Tzipora Berman, who's the chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. She's also a director at Stand.earth, and she's published a book that's called This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge. She speaks on fossil fuel and climate change throughout the years and has spent the past 30 years creating global change programs and advising global campaigns for the government. Welcome, Dr. Sipora Berman, to Driving Impact. And I feel like it's a privilege for us to have you join us and talk about an important topic of our time, which is climate change.

Thanks so much for having me.

And I wanted to start a little bit by getting to know you, who you were as, as a kid. So when you were growing up as a kid, did you know, how did you know that of what you wanted to do in your career as a climate activist? Were they ever like some chrysalis moments or pivots? Did you know what you wanted to do when you were growing up?

You know, I don't think I did. I think it evolved over time. I was certainly always interested in environmental issues, but not— I didn't really think of it as a career. And in fact, coming out of high school, my first— in the first university degree I pursued was a degree in fashion arts design.

Oh, wow.

And I did that for a year. And And then I decided to travel that summer. And that was a pivotal moment for me. I traveled to Europe. And this is probably 1991, something around there. And at that time, there was incredibly bad air pollution in a lot of cities in Europe. It was before some of the newer laws came into place constraining how many cars can go into the city centers, but also before a lot of the vehicle efficiency laws. And so I had this dream. I loved art history and I loved art and fashion and I wanted to go see the Acropolis in Greece. And I went to Athens and Athens that summer was just choked in yellow smog. And I never forget standing at the top of the Acropolis and it was before the restoration. So it was literally crumbling from acid in the air. And I looked down and the whole city was just covered in yellow. And when I got back to my hostel that night, I remember I was coughing up like black goo and my face was all black. And I got so— I'm very privileged in Canada. We have big, beautiful country, a lot of forests, and the air was certainly a lot of— I'd never experienced that kind of pollution before. And so my sister and I said, okay, let's go somewhere natural. Let's go hiking. And we chose this spot in Germany, the Harz Mountains, and got— we had a Eurail pass, got on a train that night, woke up, we were in Germany. And we got out and it turns out that forest had been left standing, even though it was dead as a result of acid rain and industrialization. As a testimony to what society could do. And we didn't know. And so we walked through this forest for an entire day through a standing dead forest, not a leaf, not a plant, not a bird, just standing dead trees. And so going from Athens to the standing dead trees, and it was a real pivotal moment for me. And I came back home and I dropped out of fashion arts design and I applied and joined the environmental studies program.

Wow. And when was that? Was it like 20 years ago, 30 years ago?

30, over 30 years ago now.

So imagine if it was— it looked like that 30 years ago, what does it look like today? Thank you for sharing your story. I feel like that's a major chrysalis moment, and because of this moment that today you're doing the amazing work that you do. So feeling grateful for that moment, even though that's a little bit scary of a picture. I wanted to jump into the topic of today, which is climate strategy, and I wanted to get your perspective on what do you think is missing for the conversation on climate change for us to actually be able to fix the critical point we're in today. And just for you, Dr. Berman, our audience is an audience of normal people who are trying to impact the world but really navigate climate change in a very digestible way.

You know, I spent a long time trying to figure this out because the beginning of my career I worked on forest conservation and protection of forest and forest policy. And I didn't start working on climate change till about probably about 15, 20 years ago. So I was already a decade into my career before I started working on climate change. And I switched because I realized for me, the entry point or the reckoning moment was that so much of our forest is being destroyed as a result of climate change. And that was what made me start to work on climate change. But it took me years before I really understood how to be effective before I, and I think it was because it's been made so complicated. You have to, you feel like you have to be an expert, you know, you need to know whether it's this emissions reduction by this date and this percentage or these complex policies. And now that I've been doing this for decades, I realize that actually it's not so complicated. This is about whether or not we use and produce more oil, gas, and coal or not.

Okay.

So a lot of people don't realize that, but 86% of the emissions that are the pollution trapped in our atmosphere, when a pollution gets trapped in our atmosphere, it causes almost a blanket that smothers the Earth. And when that blanket— because of that blanket, we now have a dramatic increase in extreme weather, floods, fires, droughts, and lethal heat. Lethal heat alone killed 5 million people on the planet last year because they had nowhere to go for their bodies to cool down.

Oh my goodness.

There were points last year that were so hot, the hottest ever recorded in human history, that there were some places where the government was saying, don't go outside, you'll die if you go outside. We're now at a critical moment on the planet with lethal heat. All of this is happening because of 3 products: oil, gas, and coal.

So oil, gas, and coal.

And so the future of our planet is just dependent on how much oil, gas, and coal we use and whether we continue to produce it. And what I realized is that for decades, our climate policy and the conversation, international agreements, has focused on reducing the demand. For fossil fuels, trying to increase renewable energy, and really only about cutting emissions. But meanwhile, the industry keeps increasing new projects, keeps increasing the production of fossil fuels. So even though the science is really clear that we need to cut in half by 2030 the pollution that we're allowing to get trapped in the atmosphere.

Yeah.

Right now, we're on track to produce 110% more new oil, gas, and coal projects by 2030 than we can ever use on the surface of the planet, or will take the planet way beyond the 1.5-degree goal. And all that really means is that the 1.5-degree goal, if we continue to get hotter past 1.5 degrees, that means millions more people will die. That means there'll be a lot less food and food will become more expensive. It means that some areas of the planet will get to be unlivable. And so it all comes down to, are we using more fossil fuels or not? And are we producing more or not? And what I realized is that our governments are only constraining emissions, but they're not regulating how much fossil fuels are built. And that's because every government and every country knows we need to use less, but they all want to be the last barrel sold. Because they're making billions in profits. And so the average person, what we need to do, we need to obviously be careful how we live. You know, we need to reduce our footprint where we can. But what's even more important is that we ask our elected officials who work for us, the government works for us, that we make sure that they know that we care whether or not they're stopping fossil fuel expansion and increasing the expansion of renewable energy. It's that simple. We have to stop building the bad stuff and build more of the good stuff. And if you write to your elected official, your member of parliament, or you call their office, that actually they have a metric that then means way more people, they think way more people care about it. And if they think there's going to be consequences for them, like we'll support them if they do the right thing, or we might not vote for them if they do the wrong thing, then that's how we get the big systems and law changes that we need.

So basically having more people writing and calling their parliament, right? And petitions also work in terms of taking action.

Absolutely, petitions work. And organizing yourself. Like some people say to me, I love the Fossil Fuel Treaty. It's such a big, bold idea. How can I help? And I say to them, make it your own. Like we have a small core team that is trying to design materials and information. But don't wait for someone else to organize, to organize that march or that protest. Don't wait for someone else to launch a fossil fuel treaty campaign in your city or your country. This is the moment when we need all hands on deck. And whether or not you can do it full-time or whether you can just do it a couple hours a week, we have to think about what we're doing. And that means not just thinking about what we buy, but also how we're spending our time.

I think that's such a powerful statement, Dr. Birben. So to summarize it for our audience, a couple of things. Actions that we can take, even if you don't have a lot of time, is contacting your elected officials, contacting Parliament, calling, emailing, organizing petitions, also organizing marches or any types of movements. And then lastly, what you talked about is also changing your behavior personally in terms of not increasing the consumption of oil, gas, and fossil, but really, even though— even like just stopping, like, overall our consumption.

Well, also, those things are embedded in products. So, like, it's coming up to the holidays, people say to me, well, what am I supposed to be buying, this product or that product, this product or that product? And I always say, use these simple rules: try not to buy new things. Go, go to used stores, thrift stores, you know, resale stores, because new products, new clothing, new furniture, they all require new materials that are extracted from the earth and that use energy to produce. So try, first of all, try and create a culture where it's okay to buy things at an antique store or a thrift store and give them away. This is, you know, we have to value what's already produced. And then also think about what gifts can you give that aren't stuff? We focus on consumption so much in our society. We think of ourselves as consumers before we think of ourselves as citizens.

Yeah.

And so I've been encouraging, you know, I always encourage my boys, you know, give me a card that tells me how many times you're going to clean the kitchen. Tell me, you know, offer me some of your time to help me figure out how to get more better playlists on my music. You know, offer your time to people instead of just stuff.

And you can also give a plant, right? To a friend for the holidays. I have a—

Exactly.

My cousin, she always gives us pine cones that she collects, or she cooks something and she puts in a jar and she gives to us. I think that's a very good thing. So to go back—

yeah, I make jam.

Yeah, I love jam. My grandmother used to do amazing tomato jam. We used to live in a forest in Montreal, just— it was a forest in the back of where we lived, and we just pick up some berries and then she would do jams. But now if you go back to that place in Montreal, there's just— it's houses everywhere. So the world has changed a lot. So what do you think is keeping us from impacting change, right? Because we're at a critical point right now? And why are we seeing— because you talked about the fact there's more oil produced because every single government wants to make more money. So what else is keeping us from impacting change and turning around the climate urgency where we are in?

I think that on climate change, that the fossil fuel industry, the companies who make the most profits, they've been quite successful in doing two things. One, first of all, in making us feel guilty because we use fossil fuels. You know, the personal carbon footprint calculator, that idea came from BP, an oil company, 20 years ago, because they don't want the onus to be on them for creating a product that's killing us. They want it to be on us for using that product. It's almost like the tobacco companies, you know, they didn't want to early in the early days take responsibility either. Oh, people smoke. We're just providing the cigarettes.

Yeah.

But if you think about it, it's like a drug dealer saying, oh, I just provide the drugs because people want it. Yeah. And so look, we all use fossil fuels today. We do. We still do. Oil, gas, and coal. It's really hard to get away from it. It's especially hard to get away from if you're not privileged with a lot of money. You can buy a heat pump or buy an electric car. What if you're a single mom and you're living below the poverty line? What are you supposed to do? People say walk to work. Well, if you have very little time between two jobs, you're not walking to work. And so what I think, I think that this idea that we should feel guilty and therefore we shouldn't advocate for different systems is a problem. Like I often get people on my social media saying, oh, you flew to Dubai for the COP, or I bet, what do you still, you know, you drive a car. Yes, we use fossil fuels today because we live in a system that is dependent on fossil fuels. If we're going to live in a system that has cleaner, safer, renewable energy, then our governments need to put in place the systems and laws so that everyone can do that, not just wealthy people. And if our governments are going to put in place the laws, then we need to encourage them to do that. And I think that people have almost distanced themselves from advocacy on climate change and renewable energy because they feel guilty they use fossil fuels. And I think we need to stop that. You know, you don't not advocate for a better medical system because you use the existing one. Of course, we use things and we have to change them. So that's the first thing is I think that we have to stop feeling guilty and just start advocating. And then I think the other thing that's been holding us back is that the conversation for too long has just been about emissions. And so it's been about this complicated math and modeling about who's reducing emissions or what, by what target. Again, we've made it too complicated. And I think that is also a strategy of the fossil fuel industry. And in fact, this, when I was at the climate negotiations that just happened in Dubai, there was a letter, a secret letter that was leaked. And the letter was written by OPEC, the organization that runs the major oil companies, or major oil countries, intervenes on the major oil countries. And OPEC wrote a letter to the governments saying, don't agree. To any language about phasing out fossil fuel production, because if you do, there will be irreversible consequences for the future of fossil fuels. Well, there would be, because renewable energy is safer and it's cleaner and it, and it is available now at scale and it's cheaper. But we're not producing more renewable energy to displace fossil fuels because the fossil fuel industry keeps pressuring governments and trying to push that you can just reduce emissions, but we can keep increasing the production because the production is where they make the money. And, and, but what we build today will be what you use tomorrow.

Yeah.

So economists would say that we've been trying to address climate change by only cutting with one half of the scissors, the demand and emissions, but not cutting the supply. But the good news is I think that we've kicked open the door to that conversation at COP28 in Dubai last week. And for the first time in 30 years, we're having a conversation about how Governments need to constrain and regulate the production of oil, gas, and coal, of fossil fuels, and not just the emissions. And that's what we have to push our governments on. Don't build more of the bad stuff. We don't want more new oil and coal projects. We want less of them. And we want more cleaner and safer energy efficiency and renewable energy. And, and that's what our governments have to do, and we have to encourage them to do it. But if that's going to happen, then more people need to march in the streets. Then more people need to write letters to their governments. Because when you look at the information that's been released by Influence Map, every day the oil industry meets with governments thousands of times every day. They have thousands of lobbyists around the world. So our governments are being constantly influenced and lobbied and pushed by the companies who stand the most to benefit from us not acting. So if we're going to balance that out, we need citizens and scientists and teachers and people from all walks of life showing the government that they care and they want them to act and that there's a counterbalance to that big pressure from the fossil fuel companies.

I think that's very helpful and insightful. I think, so basically what you said just for our audience is that we have the power to change and to change the supply, right? Because it's not just about the emissions, we have the power to change the supply. And if we change the supply, then it's going to complete the picture of us, right, protecting our planet and also turning around the climate change trajectory. So where are we in that critical point? Because it's not clear, because there's a lot of information. You said sometimes we feel that you need a PhD to understand climate change. Well, you shouldn't, right? It should be very simple, like 1 1 2, but it's not.

Yeah, and it's really not.

Yeah, because I think we're not in a good place.

Let me just tell you, we're, we're, I mean, we're in, in some ways we're in a better place than we were a couple of years ago, because as a result of the Paris Agreement, which was the big breakthrough agreement that was made on climate change, governments have now committed to put in place a lot of policies to reduce emissions and demand, so to decrease pollution. Policies like setting a date for when we'll no longer be allowed to buy fossil fuel cars, where there will— the companies can only produce electric and cleaner cars. And now there are probably somewhere more than 40 countries in the world that have those policies in place. And so when you, when you look at what's happening to the demand for oil and fossil fuels, you're seeing that it's, it's starting to, to, to peak and it's projected to go down quickly, not just because of electric cars, but also because now there are policies in in a lot of countries for heat pumps. So instead of using gas, which comes from fracking and is terribly, terrible pollution to heat our homes, we're going to use electricity and heat pumps. That's cheaper, actually. And it's going to save people money. And it's going to mean that we're not using fossil fuels. It all comes back to whether or not we're using fossil fuels or not. And so now we have a bunch of good policies in place. As a result of those policies, We used to be on track for a 4 to 6 degree warming on the planet. Now we're on track for a 2 to 3 degree warming on the planet. But what people need to understand is what we're experiencing right now on the planet is only a result of about a 1 degree of warming. And at that 1 degree level, 5 million people died last year just from lethal heat alone because it was too hot to go outside. And if they went outside, they died. And so that's 5 million people in various parts of the world. And we had 7 million people last year die just from the air pollution from fossil fuels alone. So that's more people died last year from fossil fuels than any other thing ever.

And do you see it increasing every single year?

Yes. As long as our fossil fuel use increases and production and use, then we're going to see more and more people die. And those numbers that I gave you aren't even looking at people who have lost their homes due to fires or died in fires or floods. And the number and severity of fires and floods is increasing around the world. And what's also increasing is how quickly they happen and how intense they are. Yeah. So now we can have flash floods that can bury whole buildings and people drown. We can have fires that erupt like a ball of fire and a whole city is incinerated within seconds. That happened in California 2 years ago and also this year in Maui. In Maui this year, people had to just run and jump into the ocean. So imagine you're just sitting in your apartment and all of a sudden everything's on flames around you and you just have to go jump in the ocean to survive. That's what happened in Maui this year. And some people didn't make it. Some people were incinerated just sitting in their cars. This is because of the use of fossil fuels. That's what climate change looks like. So this is happening already on the planet now at 1 degree. If we get to 2 degrees, it will be even more than twice as bad, 3 degrees. And then there's also the impacts to the ecosystem. So right now we know that the oceans are at least 30% more acidic than they used to be. That means fish are dying and shellfish are dying. And it's going to increase as more carbon dioxide gets trapped in our atmosphere. So that means we'll, we'll have less fish to eat as well and other things from the ocean because as the ocean acidifies, everything dies. Or as it heats up, a couple of years ago in Canada when we had this thing called a heat dome where it didn't get cool even at night and it was terribly hot, a billion shellfish boiled in the ocean. It was so gross. She went down to the ocean. Everything just stank. And if you went down to the beach and all the mussels and the scallops, they just boiled. So the implications of those heat rises is that food becomes a lot more expensive because some places can't grow food anymore. Even the places that can are growing a lot less, or there's big disasters like floods and then all the rice paddies are gone and you don't have that. And so we've already seen about a 30, in most regions, a 30% increase in the price of food just in the last couple of years. And that will just keep going up as long as climate change gets worse. And that's why this is so important because it's no longer just a moral issue. You know, we need to protect the environment. That's a nice thing to do. It is the moral challenge of our time because it is As climate change increases, the most vulnerable in society are hit the worst. They don't have air conditioning, so they die in the heat waves. They can't afford food anymore because it's gotten so expensive. And so the studies are showing that it's women, it's children, and it's the elderly that are being impacted by climate change the most. But in fact, it will impact all of us, no matter how much money you have. If you're caught in a flash flood or a fire, it impacts everyone.

No, I think that's very, very helpful, doing the picture of what's happening today and then what could get— how it could get worse in the future, right? If we can't buy food, we can't have access to food, then it doesn't help, doesn't serve us. So you talked about like, this is what's happening at 1 degree, and this— imagine what could happen at 4 degrees. So how do we—

and we're on track to about 2.5. Just so you know. So we're out of all the policies around the world, then we're on track to about 2.5 right now. So we need to bend that curve and we need to, and we can, but it's about pushing countries to put in place more policies, more agreements, to be more ambitious. And our presidents and prime ministers will be more ambitious if they think that people care. Often I meet with presidents or prime ministers or ministers and they say, well, I'm doing as much as I can because if I do more, I won't get elected next time because the opposition is pushing against us because not enough people care about climate change. So I can't do much more than this. So that's called political space in social movement theater. Our job as citizens has to be to give more political space. Women would have never gotten the right to vote if there hadn't been people marching in the streets and chaining themselves to Parliament and writing letters and saying, "I support this." Because if you support it, then our politicians will take the actions to do it. But so we need more people writing to them and calling them and marching in the street and doing everything we can to make sure that they know that this is a priority for us. Reducing fossil fuels, increasing renewable energy, ambition on climate change, it's a priority. And if they hear that, then and they will, will take the right steps.

No, I think that's helpful. We'll make sure to link to some resources so that people can take all of these actions because—

Yeah, you don't have to do it on your own. There's so many great groups out there who are working on these issues. Fossil Fuel Treaty, you can join us. Stand.earth. There's going to be other environmental groups in your, wherever you're from, chapters of Environmental Defense or Sierra Club or 350. There's lots of groups that you can join that will provide opportunities and information to you in order to engage engage in it.

So we'll make sure to loop in so we can list all of these groups so that to help people to take action such that it doesn't become this big and daunting endeavor. So thank you so much, I appreciate it. So let's talk a bit more about like what programs that you started. So you started, you co-founded Stand Earth. Can you tell us a little bit more about this nonprofit and how it's impacting the world, but also what we can do? Like, I think focusing on simple actions is powerful for the audience trying to change the world but doesn't want to take on like a PhD or a second side job.

Yeah. Yeah. Not everyone can do this full time. I feel very lucky that I get to do this full time, but I always encourage people just take an hour at the end of a day and support somebody else's campaign. You don't have to be doing it full time to engage. But what Stand.On.Earth does, I think is really exciting. I think it's one of the only organizations in the world that is focused on, first of all, analyzing the data on a whole whole area or sector. So the fashion industry, the shipping industry, the forestry industry, and looking at the supply chain data. So from the beginning of where the extraction happens to who consumes it, and then trying to figure out what the best thing that area of work can do. So for example, let me take fashion. So Stand.earth has figured out how to trace how much each company is using in terms of energy, where it comes from, what their climate policies are, but also what their material comes from. So for example, Lululemon, some of their leggings are produced in factories that only use coal. So that means they're, instead of using renewable energy, they're using coal and Lululemon is so big that if they demand, you know, more energy in a region where they're producing their leggings, say Vietnam or Turkey, then a new coal plant could be built just for the fashion industry. And that's a huge amount of pollution. But it also means these companies have big power because these companies could say, I only want renewable energy. I'll put my factory here if you make sure renewable energy is available for it. And in that way, the companies can change practices. So every year, STAND produces a report card that ranks all the companies. So if you're wondering, is H&M better than The Gap? Is Lululemon worse than Patagonia? You can look at the report card at stand.earth's website and you can see all the fashion companies and what they do. And STAND will also give you an opportunity to engage. Like if the, if the campaign is against Lululemon right now, there'll be letters you can send to Lululemon or actions you can take in order to help increase the power to push them to change. So we do that on a lot of different issues. And we work on the Amazon, protecting the Amazon jointly with indigenous people in the Amazon. And in that campaign, we traced the money. Who's investing for more oil drilling to happen in the heart of the Amazon? And we found a bunch of banks in Europe who all say they have policies on climate and indigenous rights and biodiversity. So they shouldn't be investing oil drilling in the Amazon. And when we contacted those banks, They were kind of horrified. And now a whole bunch of those banks have changed their policies and pulled their money out of oil drilling in the Amazon. In fact, one bank, BNP Paribas, they put in place a whole exclusion zone for the Amazon in their financing. And so now they've moved, we estimate, somewhere between $6 and $7 billion out of oil trade in the Amazon because of our research.

Wow.

So Stan does this really cool research on forests, on climate, a whole bunch of different sectors. Really finds cool ways for people to engage in the campaign and to help push the campaigns. And we're doing campaigns now all over the world. So I have two organizations, Stand.earth and fossilfueltreaty.org. And we try at both to give people all the information they need so that they can also organize in their own towns.

Can you tell us a bit more about the fossil treaty? Organization, what is the goal, what the mission is, and what is focused on, and also how we can help.

Sure. So when I figured out this thing that countries and companies had been focusing on reducing emissions, but they're just allowing the production to keep growing of fossil fuels, of oil, gas, and coal, I started looking at, well, how does the Paris Agreement address this?

How—

it's the global agreement for countries to save the climate. How does it address it? You know, the words oil, gas, coal, and fossil fuels don't even exist in the Paris Agreement. Again, because the fossil fuel industry has been so successful in making their products invisible. So all the international agreements are predicated on this theory that renewable energy will get cheaper, which it has, that we'll use less fossil fuels, which we do, and that then the markets will constrain supply, which is not working. And it hasn't worked for 30 years.

Yeah, with jargon you can make it so obscure that then it protects you from accountability because nobody understands it. So it becomes—

Exactly.

Chicken and the egg.

Well, exactly. And I, and you know, the fact is the markets are totally distorted today by fossil fuel subsidies. The IMF reports that our governments are giving $7 trillion in public money to the oil companies, even though they're the most profitable companies on earth. You know what that is? $13 million a minute is being given to the oil and gas companies instead of that money going into helping make food more affordable or buildings cleaner or transportation cleaner or build more renewable energy.

Or education.

So I started wondering, what kind of agreements do we need between countries so that we can quickly stop the expansion of new fossil fuel projects. And I started doing research with academics from around the world, and we came up with this idea of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, modeled in part after the work that nations did to agree on how to stop stockpiling nuclear weapons. Created the Nuclear Non-Proliferation, um, the, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. And what's interesting about it is that treaty was created with a small group of like-minded countries with high ambition and voting rules and a strong and binding treaty. And then even though some of the big countries never signed it, they all started agreeing to those rules because they were the highest rules. They shifted the social norm. Stockpiling nuclear weapons used to be what kept you safe. And by the end of that campaign, the end of that treaty, there was recognized by the world that more stockpiling of nuclear weapons was what made us more vulnerable. It threatened us. That's what we have to do on fossil fuels. So we have now proposed a global fossil fuel nonproliferation treaty. And you know what? A year ago, only one country backed it. Vanuatu, the most vulnerable country on Earth. If climate change keeps getting worse, they're going to drown. They're the most vulnerable. So which country? Vanuatu. But get this, a year later, we now have 12 countries that are backing the fossil fuel treaty. Including Colombia, who's a major fossil fuel producing nation. President Petro at this last international climate change negotiations in Dubai made this amazing speech, which you can find on our YouTube page, about why Colombia was joining the Fossil Fuel Treaty. So now there are 12 countries, but there's also over 2,000 academics, 100 Nobel laureates, over 100 cities have passed motions calling for the Fossil Fuel Treaty. And over 3,000 organizations, including every major religious institution in the world, the World Council of Churches, archbishops, cardinals. We're even in conversation with the Vatican. So this is a huge movement now of health groups and women's groups and faith groups and cities, all calling on countries to start negotiating a fossil fuel treaty. So people can join the fossil fuel treaty. You can endorse it as an individual. You can get your your church to endorse. You could run a campaign to help get your city to pass a motion or even lobby your government. And we make all the resources available on our website so anyone around the world can start organizing or campaigning or advocating for a fossil fuel treaty with us.

That's amazing. And I love the fact that it started with one and now it's 12 countries and hopefully we're going to have hundreds.

In a year.

Thousands. Yeah. So there's gonna be more progress, so we'll make sure to link to that as well. And you're also involved in another organization, which is around illegal— you have a drone organization which monitors illegal logging.

Yeah, that's part of Stand.earth. That's a campaign that's part of Stand.earth, and it's a campaign that we've been looking at because, look, until we started this campaign, everyone was saying that wood pellets and bioenergy was going to be the solution to coal. And in fact, a lot of countries in Europe have switched from using coal to wood pellets and bioenergy. And so we started wondering, well, where's the wood coming from? And the industry was telling us, oh, it's just from wood chips. It's from never whole trees. It's not really. But then when we started contacting communities in Canada, where a lot of the old-growth forest is. They were like, no, they're lying. They're using whole trees. They're logging whole forests to make these wood pellets and then selling them to Europe and Japan and other countries and telling them that it's sustainable heating. They should be using heat pumps and renewable energy, but instead they're destroying what's left of the forest. And so we decided to research it. And so we went to all the regions and they make it very secretive. It's hard to find out what's going into the plants. So we put up drones above the plants so that we could take footage and see. And sure enough, trucks were coming in with whole trees that were logged just to make these so-called sustainable wood pellets out of— they said it's wood waste. It's not. They're logging forests and then making them into pellets and then saying it's cleaner and safer than using coal. But when they could be doing electrification and renewable energy and heat pumps instead. And so they're destroying forests. And right now we can't afford to destroy more forests because forests are our natural carbon sinks. Like a tree is the best technology we have because trees suck carbon out of the atmosphere and release oxygen. We need them in order to maintain healthy ecosystems for humans to survive. And you know, 80% of our old growth or frontier forests are already gone. 80%. We only have 20% left on the planet. And most of that's in 3 countries. Canada, Russia, and Brazil have the largest areas of forest that are left on the planet. And so what's— we need to protect those areas that we have left.

And is it possible to— I mean, it takes 20, 25 years for a tree to grow. Even planting new trees is not necessarily going to go fast enough for us to turn around.

No, we do need to plant more trees. But the fact is, in some places it takes even longer than 25 years. Some of the trees that are being logged in British Columbia, these trees are 400 or 500, 600 years old. Yeah. Even older. And so in some areas where you still have primary forests and it's slow growing, like in British Columbia, these trees are the largest living biomass. Standing biomass of any place in the world. So they store so much carbon. It would take a whole generation and more for the trees that they're logging today to then grow old enough, you know.

So how can we help stop the logging? Because I know you have drones monitoring them, trying to catch companies or doing that.

Yeah, well, again, it's about citizens engaging. So stand.earth, there's information on our website. There's petitions you can sign. Draft letters so you can send your own letter to your elected official. And if you're living in a different country, you should be checking, is my country importing these products or are they, are we, you know, is my government saying that bioenergy is renewable energy? We have to call them out and say, no, that's not true.

No, I think that's extremely important. 100%. And then when we look at— so we're going to look at stand.earth, we'll make sure that we share the resources. I wanted to go into COP28 just a little bit because I know you're coming freshly from Dubai where there were a lot of conversations.

And for our audience, I'm going to explain what, uh, COP28 is.

It's the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. So it was held in Dubai on— from November 30th to December 12th. Now we're December 14th, so it 2 days ago, like you're very, you're very fresh from the conference. I was looking online on your website as well and your Facebook and all your socials, and I saw there was a lot of like hold the lines and movements from youth who were actually trying to, to, to march and, and organize around COP28 to see significant change. So I want to have your perspective of like, you talked a little bit earlier about some of the positive outcomes that were done there. So how did it go?

In a lot of ways, it was a historic Conference of the Parties after 28 of them, because this conversation about fossil fuels and about how the fossil fuel industry has been trying to make their products invisible and not get any laws that constrain the production, that was really broken open for the first time, maybe in part because this was the first one, climate negotiations, that was held in an oil state like the UAE. The president of COP that was appointed by the UAE is the CEO of an oil company. And so it was almost like it brought the issues into stark relief and we had different conversations. I mean, this was my, I don't know, I think I've been to 15 years of COPs and this one was totally different. It was a real conversation about fossil fuels. We made some real gains. Well, first of all, on the first day of COP, they agreed to form the Loss and Damage Fund. That's important because a lot of the countries that are experiencing the worst impacts of climate change, well, they didn't create it. Like Canada, the US, UK, these wealthy countries have a historic responsibility because we are the ones that put the carbon in the atmosphere, the pollution. And now these other countries in the global south are having the worst impacts. So for years, there's been this conversation about creating a loss and damage fund that the wealthy countries put money into to help the developed countries deal with the impacts of climate change. And the loss and damage fund was created. There's not enough money in it yet, but it was created. So that's a good step.

It's a start, yeah.

Yeah. And then the other good steps are that there was a commitment to the tripling of renewable energy and the doubling of energy efficiency by 2030. Those are great targets. And I'm really glad they did it. One problem is that it was argued by many countries and many experts that they should put in the, in, in the agreement that we're tripling renewable energy in order to displace fossil fuels. And they didn't agree to that. And I think that's because of the influence of the fossil fuel industry. Because look, if we just build good stuff, more renewable energy, but we don't commit to decommissioning and taking away the fossil fuel energy, then we just keep the pollution happening. And everybody uses more and more energy. You know, it's like, it's like, you know, it's like saying, oh, I'm, you know, I'm going to be healthy because I had a carrot juice today. I also ate 4 bags of chips. You can't. You have to eat those chips. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, it's like someone said to me the other day, it's like they're saying, I'm still going to smoke a pack a day, but I'm also going to have a carrot juice. So I'll be healthy. No, it doesn't work that way. You have to reduce the bad stuff too. And so we didn't get that at COP and that was frustrating. But we did get in the text a recognition for the first time that we need to transition away from fossil fuels. And I think that's a historic moment. It sends a very strong signal to the marketplace and to countries that they need to start putting those policies in place. But again, the draft text had a commitment to reduce the production of fossil fuels, and the, the presidency took it out of the text before it was finally signed. So that's frustrating because all these people are talking about a just transition and a transition But they're still expanding the problem. There are hundreds of new oil, gas, and coal projects planned around the world right now. And they haven't committed to stop expansion and then wind it down. And so that's a failure of the process. And that's, and that's why we're calling for a fossil fuel treaty. And I think the momentum for a fossil fuel treaty coming out of this COP is going to be huge, because people have seen the limitations of a process where 190 countries, including the countries that stand to benefit from us not acting on climate change.

Yeah.

Those countries have to reach consensus with the other countries. And what we're designing in the fossil fuel treaty is that it would be designed by a group of first mover countries that create high ambition rules that are in line with the science. And that will, that's a different model than the model that is currently happening. And I think it would be a complement to the Paris Agreement. And so I think there's a lot of momentum on the fossil fuel treaty coming out of COP, but I don't think there are other major outcomes out of this Conference of Parties.

Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, but I think at least if we can drive some change with the treaty, that's one way to be able to drive some impact in that sphere. Exactly. And you met with a lot of presidents and other activists. And did you have any encounters that were transformative or exciting? Were you going to collaborate on future projects?

I did a couple of things. Well, one is I met with the World Health Organization. This is the WHO, is a UN body, one of the most powerful in the world on health issues. And they've endorsed the Fossil Fuel Treaty and they're going to help campaign and convince governments to join. So to have a UN organization like the WHO on board, that's really exciting. And health groups from all over the world, doctors and nurses and health organizations who are joining the treaty. I met with a lot of faith leaders, archbishops and cardinals and the World Council of Churches. And, you know, a lot of faith groups are joining up to the treaty and talking about talking to their congregations and getting more faith leaders involved. We even started having conversations with the Holy See in the Vatican. And so that was amazing. And then I would say the other most inspiring for me was Colombia. Colombia is a coal-producing nation, fifth largest in the world. Their economy is 65% dependent on fossil fuel exports. And they're one of the countries that joined the treaty at COP. And not only that, but their president, President Petro, gave the most inspiring speech I've ever heard in my life. And we put it on our YouTube channel. So people can look at Fossil Fuel Treaty's YouTube channel and look for President Petro's speech. He was, he's an amazing man. Didn't have a single note in front of him, no papers. He just sat there and he just talked. And he talked about the future of the planet and how the Fossil Fuel Treaty gives him hope. And he talked about how The choice we have right now is in valuing life. And if we're going to value life and living systems, then we have to be creating the policies that ensure that we're protecting life. And it was just, I don't know, it was a very poetic and just beautiful speech. I found it very inspiring. And also there's a minister that works for Colombia, in Colombia, Minister Susana Muhammad, one of the smartest women I've ever met and so powerful, just relentless the whole COP. Arguing against the expansion of fossil fuels. And she said, look, our economy right now is dependent on fossil fuels. We all use them. But we know every day we make the problem worse. And that's why we need to cooperate. That's why we need new bold visions like the Fossil Fuel Treaty. And like hearing her and President Petro talk about it, for me as the founder of the treaty, it was like, it was an amazing experience because it made me realize that this is not It's not about academics and scientists now calling for this thing to happen. This thing's happening. Yeah. These countries see it as theirs and it is theirs because I can't negotiate a treaty. I'm not an elected official. Only the countries can negotiate a treaty and they're now designing it. And the secretariat is now in, you know, really in service to the movements around the world building the campaign and also the treaties who the countries who are now starting to design this treaty. So it just felt really real and hopeful to me.

That's incredible. I mean, congratulations. I think it's exciting to have a big win. And so if we want to have more wins, right, we want to support you in your cause. So you talked about there's 5 countries who are the biggest coal-producing countries. Colombia is one of them. What are the other countries where there could be more advocacy from our audience to help support?

We only have 12 countries that have signed on so far. So any country in the world is going to help. And there's lots of people working on the fossil fuel treaty all over the world. Our, our secretariat is there for you if you want to run a campaign in your city or in your country or with your faith institution. We have a small global team of staff who work full-time just helping people make sure they have the materials they need. So you can just contact us through our website. I guess I really, I really think it's important for people to make it their own. Don't think about helping us. Think about how you can run your own campaign with your own groups and And, you know, I would say some of the most important countries to advocate in are the wealthy countries: US, Canada, UK, Norway, Australia. These countries are responsible for the majority of fossil fuel expansion in the next 5 years. And they're the wealthiest countries. And the wealthiest countries should be acting first because it's easier for us to stop expansion and diversify the economy into other products that don't kill us. And so the fact that we're seeing, you know, the US is responsible for the majority of expansion right now, but Canada is not good either. So these wealthy countries, that they're the ones expanding it right now, it's just wrong. And so they're going to need the biggest pushes because that's where the fossil fuel industry is the strongest.

No, I think that's very helpful for us to know. I'm based in Los Angeles, so totally. I'm in the US, so I can definitely—

Well, you should be proud. You know, your governor, Gavin Newsom, is one of the only politicians nations in the world that is really standing up to the oil industry. In fact, he's suing them. California as a state is suing the oil industry because they knew about climate change. They hid it from us. And then they, then they, then they've systematically tried to weaken the laws. And he's amassed this amazing case and he's suing the oil industry. And guess what? California signed on to the fossil fuel treaty, became the second state in the world to sign on to the fossil fuel treaty. So that was exciting.

It's exciting. I'm excited about that as well. So as we wrap up this conversation, and thank you so much for your time, um, I think we talked a lot about raising awareness about environmental issues and also mobilizing public support for conservation efforts, right? So everybody can play a role. And I think it's, it's been such a rich conversation for us, right, to understand what are the small steps we can take working with our government officials and whatnot. And you also shared amazing achievements and milestones for the 3D, but also at COP28, which is extremely exciting, and we're proud with you. I think, lastly, I want to make sure that we summarize for all— everybody's listening to us. So we talked about all the things that we can do. If we could summarize all the actions that the normal person who doesn't have a lot of time can take to be able to turn around the climate trajectory, if you want to summarize them for us and make it very— because we want to create a crisp video that we can relay across.

Sure. It's— it is really important that we try and live our best lives, that we buy things that are reused first, that we try and reduce our carbon footprint. But more importantly than that, that we write to our elected officials, that we participate in marches, that we participate in petitions. Join campaigns that you care about, or organizations like Fossil Fuel Treaty or Stand.earth who are trying to make a difference. Because this, at this moment in history, is not just about what you buy. It's about our laws and our systems, and the actions that we take today are going to save lives. So, so it's really important that we all try and make an effort.

It's amazing. Thank you so much, Dr. Bergman.