Episode 5: Overshoot Live

Laurie Laybourn:

Hello, and welcome back to Overshoot. I'm Laurie Laybourn, and this is episode five. It's the last episode of the series, and it's a little different, because we're recording it in front of a live audience at the Foyds Group headquarters in London. And like we've done throughout the series, we're here to talk about what overshooting the 1.5 degree climate goal means. It's been 10 years since that goal was set, so as the temperature goes above it, well, what next? We explored a host of issues in the series so far, from complacency about the impacts of overshoot to stories that could galvanise action going forward. But there wasn't room to talk about everything. So in this episode, we go into more detail on some big issues. Ranging from law to geopolitics. And to help us do that, I'm joined by an all-star panel of thinkers and doers. We have Arlo Brady, CEO of Freud's Group and co-founder of Goals House, Olivia Lazard, a fellow at the Berggruen Institute, Harsh Narula, a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers and Oxford University, and Clover Hogan, climate activist and founder of Force of Nature. And so, to kick us off...

Arlo, I'll come to you first. You lead a comms agency that presumably spends a lot of time thinking about sustainability and how we talk about it. So as we approach 1.5, what next for communications about climate change? What do we do as we head over this 1.5 degree target? And what does that mean for our climate stories?

Arlo Brady:

Great, thank you. Well, it's lovely to be with you. As you suggest, I think we're at a critical moment really for the climate movement at large, scientifically perhaps as your podcast title suggests, but also because of these great landscape shifts that taking place at the moment, particularly geopolitically. And the way that I would characterise this perhaps provocatively, is that we, the movement, we, say me, because I don't know who you are, but the movement in general, I think has lost the battle for hearts and minds. And that's tough to hear, I think. It can be painful. And sometimes when you say that to people who've been involved in this space for a long time, you also get a little bit of outrage. But it's a reality, nevertheless. This is where we are today. And I think that's quite ironic because we are at this very moment in time when progress is actually ramping up. I actually don't feel depressed about this space at all, quite the opposite. The energy transition is well underway and it's one of the most remarkable shifts that I think we've ever seen in human history. But for some reason, the facts associated with that aren't cutting through. Possibly because the incumbency is somewhat louder than the pioneers that moving into this space. We can go into perhaps the reasons for that later on.

That's a truism at the moment. And despite the speed of movement of that transition being rapid, I think it's probably slower than it might otherwise be if we manage to take people with us on the journey that we've been on. I think it's all very well to have progress on policy and technology, but if you want adoption, you've got to have people. On the journey with you, you've got to have people on your side. And I think this is a moment for, if I can be so bold, for us to take a sort of brief reflection. If we accept that we've lost the battle, then I think it paves the way for the adoption of a new approach. But only if we treat this as a learning moment. And sadly, sometimes that's not necessarily the way that the movement sees this. That's not the way that the movement always responds to challenge. I fear that outrage and turning up the volume is often the staple response that you see. I often hear people talking about the importance of doubling down and that won't work. I think that will be counterproductive at this point in time. So almost the entire world has moved towards populism, both left and right political forms of populism. Yet for some reason there is no populist narrative for climate action. Most climate narratives are aimed at people like you and me because they were developed by people like you and me. And that's odd because if you think about it, and you have to bear with me with this, I think climate action is a sort of Jinjitsu move for populists. I am a lifelong environmentalist. I've been in this space for a long time. But I don't get motivated, I don't wake up in the morning and get motivated by carbon sequestration or ESG or net zero or reporting, things like that, that the whole movement's been focused on for a while. What's motivating me is the idea that people might be able to live better lives. They might be wealthier, they might be happier, they might be healthier, they might be more secure, they might live in harmony. With wonderful nature and biodiversity that surrounds them. That's the sort of manifesto that is in my head and what wakes me up in the morning gets me up. And that's what most people want and that's what sustainability is all about. But for some reason, the jargon and the ideology and the group think has gotten in the way in last few years. So that's my message to you. I think we need to get out of this silo. We need to get relevant. We need to start speaking to the majority rather than a minority preaching to the choir. And we need to listen. That's the foundation stone of good communication, listening. If you don't listen, you can't understand where people are coming from. So I would say it's a very awkward moment. It's a difficult and challenging moment. But I would counter that people shouldn't get frustrated by that. We shouldn't get upset by where we find ourselves. We need to acknowledge that what's gone before hasn't. Worked completely and it's now time to change things up and sticking with the boat analogy that you used in your first episode, it's definitely stormy out there, there's no question of that. But if you're good at sailing, those are the good days. I think you don't have to go round it, you can go through it. A storm could actually be an accelerant to progress and that's the way that I prefer to think of it.

Laurie:

Thank you, Arlo. So this is a big wake-up moment for the movement. That's what you're saying. A big moment for everything. Only if people are willing to accept that. Yes, you're absolutely right. So Olivia, over to you next. You focus a lot on security issues, on geopolitics. These are facing extraordinary headwinds now, even if we're not necessarily looking at it through a climate lens. As we go over 1.5, how do those issues get affected?

Olivia Lazard:

If we have more instability going forward, it means that we have an impetus for more control. We are entering a period which is going to be made of continuities and ruptures at the same time. And we're going to have to sort of analyze what is happening from a geopolitical perspective, from the lens of power adaptation. So the story that we're coming from when it comes to climate is we, as a human collective, are all in this together. If we fail to tackle the climate crisis, there will be something on the other side of the 1.5 ceiling, which is going to be incredibly negative for humanity. We are now moving to a story where essentially we are past the 1.5 ceiling. There will be a bunch of different things happening, which I'm going to talk about in a minute. And the story is going to be, well, geopolitical forces, geopolitical power is facing a planet on the move and therefore it needs to adapt. And if we look at what climate change produces in terms of different effects, we have different baskets. The first thing is shock and disruptions. In the face of shock and disruptions, for food baskets, for example, or food production, there is going to be a lot of instability in the form of breadbasket failures, but also inflationary pressures going through supply chains.

That's going to create a lot of contraction from an economic perspective. It's also going to give more and more impetus for biotech, for agritech, for modifications essentially of seeds, of productivity related to nature, and therefore for power incumbents, the US and China in the lead, to essentially try to roll out new forms of markets, new forms of dependencies on the back of uncertainty. of unpredictability and of shocks and disruptions. You have also other models, like the Russian model, which is essentially investing into organic forms of agriculture, saying we have to reconnect to the land, we have to regenerate, we have to make sure essentially that we reconnect with a form of natural purity, which is also evolving into forms of political language. which are quite scary and remind reminding us of what may happen when there is indeed a lot more instability. This is what we saw, for example, in the rise of the Nazi regime. So we're going to see more and more power discourses, power visions coming on the back of instability. The other thing that we're going to see and it's related is a sense of continuity as well. If we go into a planet which is going to warm potentially exponentially faster, as some scientists warn. New territories are going to open up. New economic opportunities are going to open up. So it's going to be quite confusing. On the one hand, there's going to be a lot of economic contraction, especially in certain parts of the world. In others, there's going to be economic growth, economic opportunism, and economic expansion. And that's going to come on the back of conquest. When we hear somebody like President Trump talk about Greenland, for example, well, it's because Greenland is essentially becoming more available for extractivism and for other forms of economic opportunism that weren't there in the past when Greenland was essentially inaccessible because it's just too frozen, right? There's going to be more mining. There's essentially going to be more trade. There's going to be more geostrategic positioning, more activity in the Arctic that may bring essentially this notion of re-metabolization of power and territories. Where territories become available, they need to be defended. They need to be conquered. It's the story of humanity throughout the ages, whether we like it or not. And this is still happening. The reality is that there are some powers out there which are considering climate change as what we call a strategic enabler. For Russia, again, President Putin sees potentially Siberia opening up, and therefore the myth of the Russian integrity becoming available for the very first time in the history of Russian polities. All of this means essentially that we are entering a moment of our history where we have language, territories, institutions, political and economic organisations that are going to enter a period of decay, a period of very real instability and rapid destabilisation. And at the same time, in order to counter that rapid destabilisation, power incumbents are going to try and look for the frontiers of extraction, the frontiers of conquest, the frontiers of human settlements. And I'll end on something in a way which I'm hoping will bring a sense of optimism in this story. I am one to believe that essentially we come from an era which for all its faults and weaknesses was an era of incredible human flourishing. It was the era of globalisation, the era of international institutions. Since the end of the Second World War and since the end of the Cold War, we've built institutions that were there to govern an international collective in the making. again, for all its faults and weaknesses, right? That time has now come to an end. We are moving from the era of globalisation, from the era of the international to the era of the planetary. And it comes with a lot of shady corners, a lot of shadows, a lot of violence potentially in the pipeline. But it also comes with the perspective of new institutions, new norms, new ways of thinking about the place of humanity, not just within a planet, but in between a biosphere and a technosphere which now spans the planetary. And within the technosphere include artificial intelligence, industrial compounds, et cetera, et cetera. But there will be essentially a way forward for the way that humanity repositions itself in terms of its relationship to different forms of living, of intelligence, of in techno-industrial fabrics.

Laurie:

Thank you, Livia. And I've always been struck by your, through your work, the recognition that the ways of doing geopolitics, the ways of thinking about security have been very bound for us in some ways in the past. In the future, it is collective disaster if we pursue those similar models of thinking about those things. Thanks for those opening remarks. Harj, I'm going to come to you. Using the law has been...Well, done very well in recent years in some respects and has, I think, really struck the imagination of many people around the world, opened up an extraordinary frontier that had always been there, of course. But some recent cases, some recent advisory opinions have really caught the imagination, have struck some pretty big victories. Let's hear from you then about what those things mean as we head over 1.5 degrees.

Harj Narulla

Laurie's just mentioned in particular one case from the International Court of Justice. It's an advisory opinion on climate change that was handed down a couple of months ago. I'm just interested who in the room and online if you're listening put your arm in the air has heard of that. Okay so I've got a pretty good understanding of that case. So I represented the Solomon Islands in those proceedings. They've already lost five islands to sea level rise and 6 % of their population has been internally displaced. So the state that had a lot of things to say about displacement in particular, but just the impacts of dealing with climate change. And as Laurie said, that was a real landmark moment for the law. won't really go into the details of that in my opening remarks, but happy to answer questions on that case and its significance in the Q &A. I wanted to address three points or three things that I think that will happen

in the space of climate law and litigation, which is what I specialise in in an overshoot scenario. So the first one is in relation to the 1.5 degree temperature target as a legal standard. Do we retain that once we get into overshoot territory? The short answer is yes. So I'll go into that in a moment. The second point is that I anticipate we'll see a lot more litigation around adaptation. and loss and damage in particular. So less focus on mitigation, which is what we've seen so far. And the third point is I think we'll see litigation around short-lived climate pollutants and methane in particular as the climate community looks to quick wins in terms of rapidly reducing emissions. So let's start with that first point on 1.5 degrees. Now this is obviously a target which has come from the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. We know that there was no temperature limit initially in the UNFCCC, but the underlying principle was established there, which is the idea that we need to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions because it is dangerous to humanity. Now that principle has not gone anywhere in a 1.5 degree world.

That is the logic that underpins why we have a 1.5 degree target later enshrined in the Paris Agreement and then affirmed in subsequent COP decisions. And that's something which the ICJ has just again reaffirmed. So all that happens in a world in which we've exceeded 1.5 degrees is not that the legal standard therefore shifts in line with rising emissions, but rather that the pathway to 1.5 degrees changes and has to take into account net negative emissions. Now that's obviously a very tall order. And I think there's a real question about whether or not that's politically feasible. But as a legal standard, we're not going to see any shift in the 1.5 degree target as a question of international law. Whether or not that remains the case in say 10 years time and whether or not the COP process becomes increasingly absurd potentially when people talk about 1.5 degrees when warming has exceeded that. I think that's again another political question, but again, as a question, as a matter of international law, that's where we are at the moment. Maybe a comparison with another area of law is useful to think about what that target means. So if you have an environmental law which is designed to avoid the extinction of a particular species, and then we fail and that species goes extinct, then that law becomes redundant, right? There's no purpose to it anymore. We don't have that here in this context because of the point I made before, which is there's still a pathway to 1.5 degrees, again, through CDR and net negative emissions. So it's unlike other types of environmental and international laws in that respect. So the second point is that I think we'll see a lot more loss and damage and adaptation-focused litigation. Most of the climate cases you will have heard of to date are focused on mitigation, focused on making sure that governments are increasing their NDCs or coming up with emissions reduction targets in the first place. The Ogenda case, which is kind of the famous case from the Netherlands, really set off this trend. But I think we're seeing more and more cases now focused on in particular corporate actors and their responsibility for loss and damage and attempts by communities that are affected by climate change to get the polluters to pay. So I think we'll see more of that type of litigation in coming years. And the third point I want to go into is just this question of short-lived climate pollutants. Because of the nature of methane and other short-lived climate pollutants, they have the potential to have a cooling effect in the short term. Methane breaks down in the atmosphere between nine and 12 years in the atmosphere, and it's a superheating form of greenhouse gas. So I think there might be a strategic pivot. from the community of climate litigators to focus on those types of gases, short-lived climate pollutants, rather than CO2, as we look to try and get sort of back down under 1.5 degrees or to try and limit warming as much as possible. So those are three trends that I see emerging in the climate litigation space, but there are actually a lot of other legal implications, which I'm happy to go into a little bit later.

Laurie:

Amazing, thanks Harj. And yes, let's get some questions about that from the audience when we come round to it because that's just such a huge, for me, a huge frontier to go further into in an overshoot scenario for exactly the reasons you say. Clover, let's come to you, last but not least, you have spent many, many years in climate activism as, partly as founder of Forced Nature, which has done some amazing stuff, particularly engaging with younger generations.

mining your huge experience of activism across all different areas, what does overshoot mean for that?

Clover Hogan:

So my activism journey started at the ripe old age of 11. It was Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, which radicalised me. And by the time I was 16, I had the opportunity to go to our version of the Met Gala, which was COP21 in Paris. And I remember stepping into COP with this kind of starry-eyed optimism, because up until that point, all of my activism had very much been at the community and at the grassroots level. And for the first time, I alongside a number of my peers and fellow students, we were at the adults table, right? We were where power was and we were with decision makers. And yet the image that I had in my head of people with all of the power, all of the influence doing everything to mitigate this crisis was very different from the reality that I stepped into. So the first event that I attended was sponsored by the likes of Coca-Cola, Shell, BMW. iconic polluters and contributors to the climate crisis. My friend compared it to attending a conference on lung cancer sponsored by Philip Mars. That's the cigarette company for your younger listeners. I met plenty of policymakers and politicians, and yet instead of meeting inspired, passionate people, I met people who were trained in calculating and making calculated. Decisions and commitments scheduled so far into the future that they required no immediate action I was struck by the fact that there was an almost a complete omission of mention of fossil fuels if we take the conference on lung cancer Analogy, like attending that conference with no mention of smoking and in a particular moment of absurdity I remember watching a group of people eating beef burgers under a poster

about deforestation in the Amazon. And so I felt quite cynical for the first time in my activism journey. And of course, after two weeks of intense negotiations, the 1.5 degree threshold was established. And as you talked about in the first episode of this fantastic podcast, that was a tremendous feat, which was largely attributed to the tireless work of small island nations and vulnerable countries to climate change. And yet already the way that the media reported on that threshold rubbed me the wrong way. because they didn't communicate it as a deadly threshold. They communicated it as a goal, as a target. Now, I wish 10 years on that I could tell my younger, cynical self that, know what, we turned it around and, you know, against all odds, we made it. And yet all of us in this room and all of us listening know that that's not true. For the first time last year, we crossed the 1.5 degree threshold. Now, I couldn't have anticipated many of the events of this past decade. The rise of authoritarian figures like Bolsonaro and Trump. The increase of authoritarianism and fascism. The way that tech companies, once heralded as green corporate leaders, would quietly shelve their climate commitments in favor of energy and water guzzling AI. I couldn't have anticipated just how steeply we have veered off course. But one thing that I knew to be true 10 years ago and one thing that I think is especially true right now is that we're failing to interrogate two critical things when we talk about climate. And that is growth and power. Now, even today, many of the climate events that I attend, the rooms that I step into, I am very quickly dismissed as a communist or a radical activist for suggesting that we can't have unlimited economic growth on a planet with finite resources.

This obsession with growth or green growth as it has been rebranded has given rise to myriad forms of greenwashing. The overt forms of greenwashing, but also the corporate tactics that have been employed to allow business as usual to continue. ESG has become a clever accounting tool. Carbon offsetting has allowed companies to make the issue someone else's Net zero once again has allowed companies and politicians alike to kick the issue down the road. We've also worked under the false assumption that people in seats of power, the people who have profited off highly extractive systems, systems rooted in a history of colonisation, the exploitation of vulnerable communities and the commodification of nature. We have worked under the assumption that those people in those positions of power are somehow one day gonna choose to willingly give that power up. They're gonna be the leaders in this crisis. It's no coincidence that as we're seeing not only climate, but let's not forget ecological breakdown, the extinction of species. We've also seen the most rapid and extreme concentration of power in human history.

Today, 26 people own the same wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion. In this country, 50 families own the same wealth as more than 50 % of the population. So when we talk about how we get out of this mess, we cannot continue to ignore the role of power. And we have to accept that we will not solve this crisis with the same people and the same types of thinking that created it.

Laurie:

Thank you very much, Clover. Before we come to our wonderful audience, I'm going to do the traditional abuse of my position to share to ask a very quick question actually to all the panellists. We have another UN climate conference coming up this year as we're recording this a few weeks time in Brazil. 1.5 will be on people's minds at that. Very quickly to you all here, what would be your advice if it was asked? from these delegates at COP about how they should talk about 1.5 degrees now. Let's just have a very quick snap view on that as we run down the panel here. Arlo, can I draw on you to go first, if that's alright, to put you straight on the hot seat there?

Arlo:

Thank you, sure. I'm not sure that I would advise them to talk about that very much, to be honest with you, because I think that the applause that you heard there results from the fact that you are all believers. most people are not. They don't necessarily buy into this whole framework. I think particularly when you've got this...

dominant populism around the world. think that what we need to talk about now is the climate reality. I think you talked about there, which is that climate change is presenting real risks at the moment in all sorts of different sectors. If you're running a business, it is presenting real challenges for sovereign nations like the Solomon Islands is one example, but there are many others, including our own country. So I would encourage politicians to talk about the reality of climate rather than the statistics and the curves and all of those kinds of things. I think people are not really interested in that, honestly.

Olivia:

I would go and find a bunch of countries from what I call middle powers. So any power that is not the US, not Russia, not China, not Gulf countries. And I would sit them down. and I would advise them to work on new forms of planetary data governance and planetary data collection so as to organise what we call an integrated resource transition. We've talked a lot about the energy transition. It's still incredibly important. It's the lion's share of how we need to transition, but the reality is that our territories are changing, our ecosystems are changing, and we have, to Clover's point, not just a climate crisis or a climate breakdown, we have multiple forms of planetary breakdowns and overshoots. So how do metal powers come together to actually understand exactly where can we have mitigation footprints such as mines that are going to be really important for the continuation of the energy transition because we need lithium, rare earths, etc. making sure that we mine from them without undermining the ecosystems resilience that we all depend upon for our lives, for our economies, for our planetary habitats. And whilst making sure that, you know, like there is essentially a new form of economic remodeling, economic research, economic investigation for how trade and diplomatic and economic relations can be reinvented for going towards bioregionalism.

going towards forms of regeneration, going towards new forms of middle power concentration that can rival with wherever China, the US, and Russia are taking us, which is outside of planetary boundaries.

Harj:

So I feel like I should confess I am one of those delegates going to come up in a few weeks. I'll be part of Sullivan's delegation. So I'm saying this in a personal capacity. I think it's important to clarify, but I mean, the advice I'll be giving is very informed by the ICJA advisory opinion. And it's that 1.5 is a binding legal standard. And the fact that states are very far off in terms of their mitigation obligations, but also their financing for adaptation and mitigation, their transfer of technology to other states, all of that is lagging way behind where it needs to be. And the powerful thing about this judgment is that it basically makes clear that if states are continuing to breach those international obligations, they're liable for reparations, which is when another country, a small country, most likely can bring a case against a larger country.

In the International Court of Justice or some other international court and seek monetary damages and other forms of restitution as reparations for all of the harm that they are suffering. So the fundamental dynamics of COP have changed because we now have a really important and powerful legal tool which changes the power imbalance that has been present in the negotiations.

Clover:

What you said? Yeah, I would just add we need to focus on the complete phase out of fossil fuels. You I think there's so much noise in this space and that seems so blatant and so obvious and it's only until recent cops that it's even made an appearance in the text and even then it's still contested. So I would focus on the fact that we need to, you know, completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.

Laurie:

Thank you very much. Right to you, our patient audience, we now come. So, Rupert, over to you.

Rupert Read:

Rupert Read, Climate Majority Project and creator of the Thrutopia concept. Implicit in Clover's remarks, I think, was the sense which I share that our situation is extremely grim. We are in the grip of the most wicked collective action tragedy imaginable. And in that context, I must say I'm skeptical, although I would love to believe it, of Olivia's suggestion that we're entering into a planetary era and much more impressed with the thought which she also suggested that we may be entering into a bio-regional era. I think we need to lean into how grim our situation is and when we do so we will see our future as one very much centered in adaptation and very much centered in the local as states and planetary systems decay. And what's positive about that is that actually lots about the local by original future that could await us is, well, excellent. It'll give people meaning. It will rebuild local solidarity. It will enable the kind of community that I think was present in what Arlo was looking for to be rekindled. And people will find a basis on which they can find their agency again. So my question for the panel is, is the future planetary or local?

Laurie:

Very good. Some thoughts on this then, planetary or local? And for eagle-eared listeners of the podcast, they'll recognise Rupert's voice from episode four, where we do explore some of these themes. Who would like to come in very quickly on that very small question there about the planetary versus the local?

Olivia:

I can give it a try. I don't have a crystal ball in the future. What I know is that, as I mentioned, the international era, as we've known it, has ended. And I think it was also... I don't know if it was implicit. I think that it was quite explicit in Arlo's end-close points. The fact that, in a way, the climate movement and climate mobilisation was very much centred on, we have to pull through this together via collective action because there are too many beautiful things and viable things about the way that we've organized ourselves as a collective to lose. That's over. But not everything is over. We're moving towards, indeed, first of all, a form of planetary sapience. We're starting to know more about planetary complexity than we've ever known, maybe apart from indigenous communities who have developed forms of knowledges that have allowed them to step into this complexity before other forms of science could. We are coming at a moment of history where in any case, let it be by design or by shock, The type of globalization that we've created will simply fall apart. It will decay, as I was saying. But there will be other things after that because humans organize themselves in different cells, right? So will the planetary be a form of meta sort of organisation, meta collective action? I don't know. Maybe it depends actually on where the technosphere goes, the sort of artificial forms of intelligence go, where, how we interact between humans and what is being generated essentially in the fourth industrial revolution in terms of artificial forms of knowledges. In terms of economic, ecological, societal forms of organisation, well, it may have to be at the local or at the bioregional level, knowing that in this local, because believe me, I look at the grim aspect of what's coming, and you know this, there will be parts of the earth that will be simply uninhabitable. So the reorganisation of the local will also be transient. It will be mobile. What that gives in terms of full picture of what awaits us regarding societal, political, economic metabolisms, I don't know, but I see trends and I see a future.

Laurie

Thanks, Olivia. I think that's a mixture of them is your answer there, And let's come out here a bit.

Sarah Goodenough:

Hi, Sarah from Bellwether's group. My question is a bit of a geopolitical one. So states are increasingly stuck between a bit of a rock and a hard place, the rock of increasing anti-climate right-wing populist movements, especially in the US and Europe, but also the hard place that Hodge has mentioned of recent ICJ opinion that increases states legal responsibility for addressing climate action and increases the risk of legal action if they fail to do so. So how do you think states and incumbent political parties can successfully navigate

this really contradictory pressure as climate impacts also continue to worsen.

Laurie

That's a great last question. Okay guys, on the panel, who would like to chuck themselves in first on that one? Haj, I can see you.

Harj:

Yeah, I'll jump on the legal grenade. In some ways, a luxury of my job is I don't have to think about that in the same way as maybe others do in this room, right? My job is to try and use the stick as hard as I can and see what happens. But, you know, I think this kind of movement building to be done around the concept of reparations. I'm writing a book on climate reparations at the moment, partly to try and achieve that, because I don't think it's been socialised.

in Western Europe in particular as something that's coming down the line. And we'll see a case filed in the next year or two against probably a Western European country seeking probably tens of billions of dollars in reparations. So that's going to cause a political storm that's falling into this moment of, as you say, a low level of buy-in around climate action, I think, in the polity, notwithstanding the kind of still relatively high sort of support. It's not showing up in the policy positions of political parties as it was five years ago. So I don't really have an answer to that, but I think it's a great question. I just wanted to pick up on the emphasis on fossil fuels in particular. And I think this is actually a really crucial part of this ICJA decision, which is that they called out the fossil fuel industry specifically, and they said that fossil fuel production, consumption, licensing and subsidies are all examples of breaching international obligations under international law. And so if a country does that or a country allows corporations headquartered or operating their jurisdiction, allows any of those activities, they are breaching international law essentially. So what that means is we have all of the legal tools now to hold countries in particular accountable for the actions of multinationals. And I think that you'll see therefore

stronger action or I hope that we'll see stronger action from those states through channels like the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, hopefully in COP but in other international fora where you can say again there's a credible legal threat here if we all continue with business unusual and we need to change what we're doing otherwise we're all going to get sued.

Laurie:

Very good. Who wants to come in next for some final reflections, Olivia?

Olivia:

Power and law have had a very complicated relationship throughout the ages. We, in this room and in many rooms, believe that the rule of law is the ultimate thing that needs to be respected, needs to be enforced. I have been to places where the rule of law doesn't exist. And I think that these places are going to grow. I think that we're actively seeing essentially a walking away from the concept of the rule of law, from a power perspective.

I truly hope that this is a temporary walking away. But the walking away is explained by a re-metabolization between power and planet. The types of institutions that we've built, legal, political, economic, international institutions, come from a moment of history where territories were more or less stable, where energy systems were built in a structure. And all of that is changing. So there will be more more mobilisations around how to apply the law. But I'm pretty sure that the norms underpinning the law, one, are changing for the worst in the short term. And they will have a completely different framing.

in the age of the planetary. I am also particularly convinced that in the age of the planetary, the law will not be anthropocentric. I don't think that the human will necessarily be at the center of it. I think that life fabrics will be at the center of it.

Laurie:

Thank you, Olivia. And Clover, could I call on you next, please?

Clover:

I suppose it's more of a personal reflection. I think many of us have been feeling really overwhelmed, not just this year, but for the many years we've been working on these issues, but perhaps especially so in 2025. As you kind of alluded to, it feels like we're trying to put out all of the fires. It's not just the...

the easy issue of climate change, it's the resurfacing of fascism and bodily autonomy and the rights of immigrants and everything else in between. And from my own experience, it's so easy to feel that despair creep in, particularly when we attach ourselves to the efficacy of our actions or the outcomes of what we're doing. And this has been a very outcomes focused conversation, which is important.

But what happens if we exceed 1.5 or if we exceed 2 degrees? Do we just throw the towel in and decide it's too late or it's not worth it?

For me as an activist working in this space, I've realised that I have no real influence on the outcome and whether we lose or fail and what does that even mean.

I have no influence over those outcomes, but if I were to look into a crystal ball and see that in 30 years, 50 years, it's all gone out the window and we haven't achieved everything we wanted to, that would not for a second change what I'm doing today. And I would hope that it wouldn't change it for any of you either.

In this moment, we act not because we hold on to false hope or perhaps even because we believe we're going to win, but simply because we know in our hearts that it's the right thing to do. And that is enough.

Laurie:

Thank you, Clover. and Arlo, bring us home.

Arlo:

I'll do my best, Jim. Maybe I'll give a personal reflection as well. So I've been building climate campaigns and initiatives for way more than 25 years without betraying my ancient state. And I would posit that this is the most exciting moment in my career to be in the space that I'm in, despite the political context. Despite the worsening scientific status of climate change, I think there are hundreds of thousands of people around the world working in this space at the moment doing really exciting things. I'm lucky and privileged enough to be exposed to some of those people on a fairly regular basis. I was at New York Climate Week a couple of weeks ago and I came back feeling really, really excited because I was just bowled away. By the progress that's being made and that doesn't seem to be cutting through. so I think what we need to do is focus on making sure that some of that positivity cuts through to ordinary people because behaviour change doesn't take place by sharing negativity alone, right? Some people are motivated by negativity, maybe some of us arguably.

You know, it's a pretty dire situation, I'll give you that. And it feels like that's really driving me and spurring me to do more in this space. But in general, it's been shown scientifically that that doesn't actually motivate people to change their behaviour. You need to combine that with positivity. And there are lots of things to be positive about in this space. I would encourage you to try and be a little more positive if you can about this, about progress in this space.

Having said that, I would say that the area where I don't feel massively positive is whether we're going to achieve a just transition. Personally, I feel as though we're on a trajectory towards a pretty quick transition, but I don't think it will be a just transition. And I think if we had extra time in our busy lives to focus on something, I would be focusing our efforts on making sure that the transition is as just.

as is humanly possible.

Laurie:

Thank you Arlo. As I anticipated, I come out of this with some kind of electrified terror, is maybe the way I would describe that, which is a theme that we had pulsing through Overshoot in all of the different episodes. I want to say a huge thank you to our panel. A big round of applause to Arlo, to Olivia, to Hajj and to Clover, if I may.

Now. Thank you. Dear, dear audience, dear listeners as well, the future people who are listening back to this. I think this is part of a humble effort to contribute to what hopefully is a growing conversation about what happens as the world overshoots 1.5 degrees. We did our contribution to that throughout the series. We've heard about even more issues, the law, geopolitics, the way we engage with people's lives and the way we...

interact with the huge inequalities that typify our current planetary moments. And we hope more of that is to come. And we hope more people engage deeply with this conversation and particularly the strategy for what comes here next. So I would like to wrap up our live recording now with one final round of applause for our fantastic panel and for Freuds for hosting us this evening and for you to all coming this evening as well. Thank you very much.

[Applause]

Overshoot was produced by Planet B Productions in partnership with the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative. It was written and presented by me, Laurie Laborn, with research by Ben Shred Hewitt, production coordination from Daniel Norman, script consulting from Daniel Trilling, sound design and mix by Ben Heidemann and James Fox, original music by Hanil, and special thanks to Aaron Thierry, Mirta Boot, James Dyke, Henry Throp,

Stephen Backhouse and you. Thank you for listening. Don't miss an episode or our bonus content. Search for Overshoot Pod.

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