Kate, Rich, we are now a week into COP28.
What are your impressions so far?
What have you made of it?
What are you excited about, Kate?
Yeah.
So one thing I've been reflecting on is, you know,
Google has been attending COPs for quite some time, really with
a dual purpose, first to endorse strong outcomes to the
negotiations, bringing that voice of business.
And also to share what are we seeing from a technology
perspective.
How can technology accelerate progress on climate action?
And frankly, for me personally, I've been working on COPs since
2009, and I've been struck by not only the presence of
technology companies, but also just of business in general.
And I think that's so crucial because a lot of the
conversations are tough
right now. We're off track.
The stocktake is not where we want it to be, but business is
really coming forward with solutions.
And I was on stage yesterday with the CEO of Schneider
Electric.
We were announcing a new consortium where we're bringing
together the semiconductor supply chain, that whole value
chain, so we can drive forward decarbonization of electricity
together through business solutions.
So I've been finding that really heartening.
And then of course we've been talking a lot about AI, about
the unlock opportunity that AI has to accelerate the existing
solutions
we have, up to 10% emissions reductions by 2030.
So just to build on Kate's points, I found this first week
to be really encouraging and not just my own impressions, but
talking to so many across government, business, NGOs. The
number of important agreements on loss and damage, on climate
finance, on food and agriculture, on heavy-emitting
industries, on methane...
and these are meaningful things.
And I think we see in this first week when we bring the whole
community together, we bring government, we bring business,
we bring NGOs and philanthropists, and we put them
together.
And we don't try to get to unanimity.
We try to get to a strong coalition of the willing.
We can really push quite substantially.
And it's also an enormous opportunity for learning.
I don't know.
I feel like every day I'm finding stuff I didn't know.
I think the challenge, if we're honest, is the next week is when
all...nearly all of us leave the room and we're at the government
negotiators, which we know has a lot of history and a lot of
challenges,
and whether they're going to be able to set aside the
differences that have really caused us to come up short and
the past 27 COPs and to get the kind of breakthroughs in
collaboration.
That part we don't know.
But I think we can feel really good about the way the whole
global community is coming together to take on these
challenges so far.
And I think that's reflected in the mood we're seeing.
I know it's about community and working together and
collaboration.
Kate, there, spoke about the appetite of business.
Now, I haven't been covering COP as long as you have, Kate, but
it does to me seem like this year there's a real push for a
bit from business.
Is that, is that what you're seeing there, Rich?
Yeah, I I think we started in Glasgow by recognizing that to
get the kind of action we wanted, it couldn't just be
governments.
It's business and government that have to step forward and
step forward and step up.
I think this one is taking that to a whole different level, and
that's encouraging.
It doesn't mean though we're anywhere close to declaring
victory.
I mean the things that we see written here...you know going to
regenerative agriculture three times the size of France by
2030, that's a big commitment.
But now we've got to make it real.
And that's going to take policy.
It's going to take businesses across the entire value chain.
It's going to take a focus on the farmer and really making
this work for farmers.
They have to be the power behind this.
That's a ton of hard work.
But I do think these COPs, by drawing the whole community
together, have created a different spirit of energy in
this first week of COP.
And now we have to hope that translates into the second week
of COP.
OK.
You've both been talking a lot, together actually, and with
other people about AI and the role it has to play. What's been
coming out of those conversations?
Yeah, I think, Rich, you know, one thing that I found really
noteworthy about the discussions we've been in is that AI isn't
the solution unto itself.
It's all about how AI can accelerate the existing
solutions we have.
And we know that's so critical in what we call this decisive
decade for climate action.
You know we're seeing from the stock take is we're not on track
for that 43% reduction we need by 2030.
But AI can help us to accelerate.
It can help us to better predict wind energy 36 hour in advance
to make it more valuable.
It can help us reduce contrails from aviation in ways that could
be deployed this decade.
It can enable us to better sequence traffic lights in
cities to reduce emissions and improve air quality.
So I think that's really what's giving people some hope is
seeing that there are real practical solutions.
They build on the existing technology stack, and they can
accelerate progress, which is what we really need to do right
now.
So, I couldn't agree more.
The other thing for me that's been energizing is our report
had created a lot of examples that we had identified.
But whenever we go to these sessions, we pick up new stuff
that we didn't hear.
Johan Rockström on the panel we were on talking about how AI was
going to improve climate science and make it more able to know
what the real impacts were going to be.
And, I mean, this is all about the science and getting that
science to the next level.
AI is going to be an incredibly important tool for that.
And so I found those other examples that we hadn't
identified, you know, as energizing as the ones that the,
that you and our teams I guess had identified absolutely.
And another insight that we got is it's even reaching the
negotiation halls.
So we heard that there might be mention of the opportunity for
AI in the text of the agreement.
So, we're going to watch that space too.
That would be really fantastic.
Indeed.
We will.
Thank you both so much as always.
Thank you.