In this episode of Climate Positive, host Gil Jenkins sits down with Mike Berners-Lee—author, professor, and leading expert on sustainability—to explore the central message of his latest book, "A Climate of Truth." In a world spiraling deeper into climate, ecological, and social crises, Mike argues that the most powerful lever we have isn’t new technology—it’s honesty. The conversation unpacks why truth in politics, media, and business is essential to breaking the deadlock on climate action and building a livable future.
In this episode of Climate Positive, host Gil Jenkins sits down with Mike Berners-Lee—author, professor, and leading expert on sustainability—to explore the central message of his latest book, "A Climate of Truth." In a world spiraling deeper into climate, ecological, and social crises, Mike argues that the most powerful lever we have isn’t new technology—it’s honesty. The conversation unpacks why truth in politics, media, and business is essential to breaking the deadlock on climate action and building a livable future.
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Episode recorded March 26, 2025
Chad:I am Chad Reed.
Hilary:I'm Hilary Langer.
Gil:I'm Gil Jenkins.
Guy: I'm Guy Van Sickle.
Chad: And this is climate positive.
Mike: It's a difficult time to stand up and be counted at work. It can be a difficult time to stand up for the truth. And it's a critical time to do so. What's surprising to people is they don't realize that everyone else gets it too. So we're all kind of sitting here. We know there's a problem, we wanna act, but everybody's kind of just waiting for everyone else because it's so uncomfortable to be the first mover.
Gil: Our guest this week is Mike Berners-Lee—author, researcher, and advisor on sustainability and 21st-century challenges. He’s the author of acclaimed books including There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years and How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything.
Mike joins us to discuss his latest book, A Climate of Truth, and why—in a world shaped by complexity and crisis—truth may be our most powerful tool for change.
Gil: Hi, Mike. Welcome to Climate Positive.
Mike: Thank you. It's great to be here.
Gil: A climate of truth, a very powerful text available for readers everywhere. What was the initial spark of inspiration that led you to, um, really honing in on honesty as a central theme?
Mike: Well, I've been working on climate for about 20 years now, and the reality is that we're not really making progress on it.
Some people say, oh, we're making progress, but just not fast enough. But if you have a look at the global carbon emissions curve, it's still rising every year. In other words, even after 29 climate cops, we are still making the planet worse by a larger amount every year than we were the year before. And we have to look at that as a failure if we wanna start getting somewhere.
Instead of just going around the same loop again and again and again, you know, climate scientists like me, every year we try and find slightly more articulate language to explain how much more urgent the situation's got. And every year we feel ignored in exactly the same way. And those of us who don't want to go around that loop again and again and again until our deathbeds need to stand back from the problem and ask more carefully and more deeply.
What is stopping us and get underneath the reasons, behind the reasons why we're not getting anywhere, and see what emerges as the points of greatest leverage that might change the dial on this. And when I went through that exercise, what I found was that the climate cops, for example, have been subverted by cynical vested interests from fossil fuel lobbying.
I mean, it's
it's been going since year Doc. Actually, there's a play in London at the moment called Kyoto, looking back at COP three and you know, even right back then there were very sophisticated and highly effective efforts going on to support climate.
Agreement, but it's not just at the global level. If I look in my own country now at some of the issues I've got involved in, such as whether or not to open up new coal mines, whether or not to issue new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea and so on, what I find is not poor judgment lying behind the arguments for those things.
It's actually straightforward deceit, the arguments put forward for the coal mine near where I live actually, were just, you know, they were bogus. They sound okay at face value. But when you dig into them and their roots, you find that there is straightforward deceit that their roots. So I wrote this book because it became clear to me that if we want to actually solve the problem, we have to get deceit outta the system.
And you know, it sounds almost too obvious, the need saying, but we are normalizing dishonesty. We've been doing that on both sides of the Atlantic. Actually, I think you've got a problem on your side.
Gil: Yeah, just a wee bit of a problem. I was gonna say, I, as an observer, at least, you have still in law a, net zero target.
Mike: But the mood of the world has changed with developments in the United States, and there's a growing narrative that maybe we question our net zero targets over here. And actually in the UK at the moment, it's a very good time for everybody to look around and you can ask yourself of your colleagues, you know, you can see who's got integrity and who just goes with the wind.
Because now's the time when we've really got to stand up and be counted.
Gil: I guess to that point, and the intended audience, I just love the dedication. Do you have it memorized? Would you like me to read it? Like who this book is for?
Mike: Well, this book is for all those who think about the rest of the world when they vote or are ready to start doing so, I mean, the challenge we, we face now.
Are global challenges. We are a global society that has to be. Our number one tribe. You know, it's okay to identify with the family unit and our local community unit and our national unit and all those things are fine, but at the end of the day, our biggest sense of tribe has got to be the global community because if we can't identify like that, we just can't deal with these global challenges and we're all going to be in deep trouble.
Gil: So build on that. I loved the treatise on this wide range of complex issues, all interconnected, climate, science, political systems, human psychology. You described this concept of the poly crisis. I. Sure. Break that down for us. Well,
Mike: we talk about a climate crisis quite a bit, but actually if you wanna deal with the climate crisis, you have to see it as one symptom of something much bigger that's going on for humanity now.
So we have become such a powerful species. We get more powerful every year, and with that power, we influence the ecosystem, the planet that we're on, and now we've become the most important influence on the whole ecosystem. So some people have a big word for it and call it the Anthropocene. So we're in the Anthropocene now, and as a result of not yet adapting to that new concept successfully, we are creating problems for ourselves.
So we've got all this technology and power, but we're not yet wielding it with the wisdom and carefulness that we need to exercise. And so as a result, we've got a, an emerging climate crisis. But linked to that, we also have. A nature crisis. We're hemorrhaging, our biodiversity linked to all of this. We are developing food insecurity at the global level, connected to all of that.
We also have rising pollution. I mean not least plastics, the plastic. Pollution curve is rising faster than the fossil fuel curve has ever been rising. And practically all the plastic in the world has been produced in my lifetime. And every year there's four or 5% more of it than there was the year before.
And it's disrupting our endocrine system and all sorts of things. So all these things and more are coming together. So it's a poly crisis, but actually. It is deeper than that. I'd say it's a meta crisis because it's also going on at a deeper level because the good news about all those physical things I just described is that from a technical perspective, we can deal with them.
I'm not saying it isn't challenging, but we've, broadly speaking, got the technology we need certainly to deal with climate. So the question is, well, why aren't we? Implementing those technical solutions, why aren't we solving these technically solvable problems? And that takes us into questions about the way we think about economics.
Our economic framework broadly dates back to a pre-Roe era. So it's unsurprising. It needs a tweak. How we do politics, you haven't gotta look around the world very far or even in the United States to see that
Gil: we're
doing
that
wrong.
Mike: Well, we're not doing politics in a way that no is facilitating the level of global cooperation that we need to achieve, which needs to be higher than we've ever had before.
We need a new relationship with technology because whilst technology has brought us many wonderful things and we need the right kind of technologies like crazy to take us through this poly crisis, it's also true to say that technology has taken us to. A very dangerous place.
Gil: I want to come back to that, but one of the things I, I liked in stepping back in your book as you do many times, so you talked about three intersecting values for actually thriving in the San.
Those are respect for the environment, others, and truth. So bring it back to truth. Why is respect for the truth the most powerful lever?
Mike: So the problems that I've described, the challenges I've described are interconnected. They're highly complex and they demand the highest quality decision making that we can possibly achieve.
If somebody in the decision making mix, whether it's a business or a politician or a media outlet, is throwing in deceit. Is actually being dishonest, is trying to make other parties believe something that they don't themselves believe to be the case. Then it just throws an enormous spanner into the decision making mix and it's a spanner.
We can't afford it. Stymies the whole process.
Gil: I wanna come back to a point you're building on. I agree with you. We largely have that. Technology we need today to at least put a dent in the carbon Yeah.
Curve. At
least, at least
Mike: make huge strides.
Gil: But you have a, a large section, um, dedicated to your pushback on the techno optimism, which you've even called it, the new face of climate denial.
Mike: Yeah, I actually think, you know, one of the most depressing narratives is to say, well, it's okay, you know, we've got the technology so we're gonna be fine if only the technology with a bottleneck. It's true that we do have the technology not to solve every corner of the poly crisis.
I mean, there are still some things we don dunno how to do. We dunno how to put low carbon airplanes, you know, in the sky across the Atlantic yet. So there's still some sticking points, but we have the technology to make enormous strides on this. But yet the carbon curve is going up and up and up. So it's something else that is stopping us.
And unless we accept that and see the poly crisis in all its depth, then we don't place ourselves in a position in which we're able to start solving it. So in the book I quote James Baldwin, the Human Rights Campaigner, and he said, not everything. That is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
So it is so important that we look deeply into this challenge.
Gil: I'd love if you were ever in a room with Bill Gates or we can name another, what might that conversation be like? 'cause he is on the other side of that spectrum.
Mike: Yeah, he really is. And I, I'm afraid, you know, he is a smart guy. He's obviously, he's technically very, very smart, but he's not on climate.
So I heard him recently say, and I hope I'm going to accurately paraphrase him here, but he said, well, two degrees is gone. But things don't get really bad until you get to three degrees, unless of course you are one of those people who relies on the annual harvest. But for the rest of us, it's really just a question of more air conditioning, you know?
And we have the technology to solve this well that is so wrong on so many levels, right? There is not a serious climate scientist anywhere who is saying that. Two degrees is fine and that things don't get bad until we get to three degrees. Actually, the scientific community is getting more and more concerned and trying to model better and better.
The concept of positive feedback mechanisms and cascading tipping points. So the idea that, for example, the methane exploding outta melting permafrost causes more greenhouse gasses, which causes more warming, which causes more fires, which causes more warming, which causes more ice to melt, which makes the earth less reflective, which causes more warming.
And at what point might all these things get out of hand? And the answer is, we don't know. But we do know that we're throwing the dice. We know that. The scientific community right now is scratching its head as to why January and February were so warm. When we are not in an El NYA anymore. We're actually in a mild land NYA, and we ought to be seeing climate symptoms receding somewhat, and we are not.
We're seeing the opposite. So I'm not saying we've already gone through these climate tipping points, but. The symptoms we are getting now, you know, would be consistent with that. So what else does Bill Gates say? That's just not right. I mean, the idea that we'll be fine up to three degrees, unless you are one of those people who relies on the annual harvest.
Well actually there are hundreds of millions of people Yeah. Who really do rely on that. Yes. You harvest. And even if we take. Dramatic action on climate right now. Even if we would suddenly start reducing emissions by 10% a year, we are already committed to those symptoms getting significantly worse before they get better.
And then there's the interaction with the other environmental impacts, such as loss of nature and pollution. And finally, there is the great unknown of how stable global society is, how resilient it is. To shocks to the system, such as a food security scare or mass migration pressure and so on. So, yeah, I'm afraid Bill Gates' take on it all is unhelpful.
Gil: Alright, let's tour around some other fascinating, um, concepts you explore in a climate of truth. Talk about the rebound effect or jevons paradox where efficiency gains can lead to increased consumption.
Mike: Actually, the Jevons paradox and the rebound effect is probably the single most important, but poorly understood simple concept that every policymaker needs to have their head around. So many people assume that when you become more efficient at something.
Then the impacts and the inputs related to that process will go down. And that's actually not what happens. What you find is that when we become more efficient at practically anything, we do more of that thing by a larger amount than is justified by the efficiency improvement. So it's sometimes called the Jevons paradox because back in the UK in the 19th century, William Stanley Jevons.
Noticed that as the UK became more efficient with its coal production, with its use of coal, it would want more coal, not less. And that same principle is playing out all over the world and all over the global economy in lots of different contexts. ICT and AI is one of those contexts, but it's everywhere and it's the reason why.
Our energy use and our carbon emissions are going up and have been going up for centuries now, despite the fact that we are becoming more efficient at virtually every aspect of human life. You know, we travel more efficiently. We store information more efficiently. We heat our homes more efficiently. We do everything more efficiently.
So. What it tells us, and this is the huge policy implication, it tells us that becoming more efficient on its own doesn't help us. If we want to reduce the impacts, then we have to constrain those impacts separately. So for example, it means that it's no good just becoming more carbon efficient in our.
Energy production, we have to constrain the carbon impact of our energy production. So in other words, we have to put something in place that limits the rate at which fossil fuel comes out of the ground and gets burned because the climate doesn't actually care how much renewable energy we've got. What the climate cares about is how little fossil fuel we burn, and the renewables themselves don't leave the fuel in the ground.
Gil: So you're probably a proponent of carbon pricing, which is not having its moment politically, but I imagine,
Mike: no, it's really not.
But anyone who looks seriously at what it would take to leave the fuel in the ground, practically, everybody comes down to a carbon price. I mean, I'm biddable. I'm open to other mechanisms that anyone can suggest, but for me.
Practically everybody else who looks at this, it is by far the simplest mechanism by which the fuel gets constrained. And the reason why we haven't got a carbon price and the reason why it doesn't get properly discussed at the 29 climate crop is because it will work. And at the moment, the fossil fuel lobby.
Has such a stranglehold over the process that it will, broadly speaking, allow the policymakers to say and do whatever they like as long as it won't work.
Gil: That's
a good segue. Your book has a fairly comprehensive taxonomy of deceit. Please give us some color on that.
Mike: Sure. If only deceit was just as straightforward as, uh oh.
Yes as
nice, plain, simple, honest lies if you like. You know, the trouble is it's an increasingly sophisticated art form. By deceit, what I mean is trying to make other people believe things that you don't personally believe yourself, and it can take the form of misdirection of attention, just distracting people away from the things that matter.
An example might be an airport waxing lyrical about. Fitting NED light bulbs in the airport buildings and not mentioning the flights. It can take the form of sort of implicit suggestions that aren't quite a lie, but they're just trying to create an impression that one thing causes another. When you know it doesn't, it can include bias, selection of evidence.
So you say, we've had a case over a coal mine in the UK where politicians say they. We've looked at the evidence and we've decided it's fine. And actually what they've done is they've selected the bogus evidence in preference to the robust evidence from impartial global, internationally respected experts.
So there's a whole kind of, there are almost too many ways to mention in which it's possible to try to pull the wool over the eyes of fellow policy makers and most of all the public. So we've gotta be really on our toes about this.
Gil: Is there one that you think is like. Particularly most insidious today, either in the UK or the us.
Well, there is confusion of the science that has followed the playbook laid down by the tobacco industry to sort of, first of all, deny it. And then just try and spread doubt about it. And then finally, if all of that doesn't work, just try to support policies that you know aren't going to deliver the result.
So for example, you know, one of that would be to say, well, you know, we are just in the business of meeting humanities, rising energy needs, so we are going to put all the effort into growing the renewable energy supply. Which is fine. We do need more renewables, but there's two things wrong in that statement.
The first one is the inevitability of a growing energy demand. So we don't have growing energy needs because we're becoming more efficient at everything. All the time. We may have growing energy once, but what, you know, actually the single most important thing to do around energy transition is to reduce our energy demand.
For some people, that takes some getting your head around, but it's the single biggest lever by far. And the other is to push more renewables without talking about the need for those renewables to replace rather than augment the fossil fuel.
Yeah. And in the meantime, truly double down on energy efficiency for the.
Fossil that is legacy that cannot be replaced and harder to abate sectors, right? I mean, you're not inherently against the importance of energy efficiency.
Mike: Oh no. Energy efficiency is absolutely a force for good as long as we constrain the fossil fuel. So actually the role of efficiency changes completely when you constrain the fossil fuel.
The efficiency without a constraint in fossil fuel is just part of the dynamics of growth that takes us into more and more trouble. But with a constraint on the fossil fuel efficiency becomes part of the mechanism by which we live better than ever whilst reducing our carbon impacts.
Gil: Okay. Maybe back to this taxonomy and, and you built on a related concept.
You call out enticing bullshit. Why is this so effective?
Mike: Bullshit is a technical term.
Gil: Yes. Very technical. Yeah.
Mike: It was, uh, very accurately described by, uh, a professor at Stanford, I think Harry Frankfurt. He wrote a paper called On Bullshit, and he describes bullshit as, uh, in a particular way. It's a mixture of fact and fiction.
It is put together with the intent to persuade regardless of which bits of fact and which bits of fiction and actually fact can be used to disguise the fiction. So you hear somebody talking about something, they say a few things that are sensible and credible and true, and you start thinking, okay, this guy makes sense.
I can go with that. I can trust him. And then your defenses go down. And then the subtle things that are the critical, subtle things that are absolute nonsense. I sort of slipped into the mix and it's far harder to spot. So a skillful bullshit merchant is a real, you know, master of an art form. Indeed.
Gil: All right, we gotta do a little hope, action, and practicality.
Many readers, perhaps some listeners feel overwhelmed. So what advice do you give someone who wants to help but doesn't know where to start? I would note your book has a incredibly comprehensive checklist of actions, but what comes to mind today in 2025 when you're asked this question as we all grapple with doom and complacency?
Mike: Yeah, so we've been lazy over the truth, and I'm afraid to say, I think the average American is going to pay a price for it in the years to come. And the global community definitely is. So at the very personal level, I. There's stuff we can do, obviously, about who we vote for, right? Like if a politician has tried to deceive you over anything at all, that tells you that they're not actually on your side.
It tells you they can't be trusted, and it tells you they're not fit for the job. And it also tells you that none of their colleagues who've stayed quiet in the knowledge that that person's been deceitful is fit for the job. Now you may need to vote for the least unfit. That's certainly the case on both sides of the Atlantic, at least to some degree, but.
And important criteria. And we've kind of normalized the concept of lying in politics. And actually it's the most dishonest politicians who push that narrative. Oh, everybody lies, is just how the world goes round. It's not the case. It doesn't need to be the case. And in fact, it mustn't be the case 'cause we can't thrive unless we end this post-truth.
Experiment. So that's the first one around politics at the very personal level. Second one is around media. We need to ask very searching questions about which media we absorb, both social and traditional media. We need to ask who owns it? What's their track record? What is their intention? Have they got a track record in any way of manipulating elections through their use of their media?
And if the answer is that they may have done, then you need to switch. You need to starve them out. Even if you find that media fun, even if you find it interesting, it's malign. It needs to be starved out. So ask very searching questions about that, and I give some simple guidance in the book, but I also encourage.
Anyone who reads the book to find their own even better criteria, I'm totally happy with that. And then the third thing, of course, is around businesses as well. You know, we need to, every time we spend money or put money in a bank, you know, we are supporting one kind of ethics or another. And we don't always have a choice.
But where we do, we should really make the effort to. But then finally, I want to talk about our role in society and in the workplace now, because it's a difficult time to stand up and be counted at work. It can be a difficult time to stand up for the truth. And it's a critical time to do so. It's also a very good time to look around at your colleagues because you can see who just goes with the wind, who just goes with what's expedient and easy and who's got principles.
And so I would encourage all listeners to stand up and be counted. And I know that that's a big ask in some situations.
Gil: Well, if they were principals before, I mean, should stand by them.
Mike: Well just remember.
How you behave. Your colleagues can see how you're behaving and they can take a view on that, and they can find out a lot about you and your level of integrity by the things you say and do and the things you call out right now at this very critical time in global politics.
Gil: What arguments or pieces of evidence in your research really surprised you or impacted you most?
Mike: One of the surprises that hit me was just in terms of the physical symptoms. I haven't been taking plastic as seriously as I do now. You know, the rise in the plastics production and pollution curve is very, very steep.
It's about two or three times the long-term average rate of rise of fossil fuel. So fossil fuels been going up about 1.8%. Per year on average for 150 years or something. Plastic is currently rising at about 5% per year. And the extent to which it's disrupting our endocrine system, messing up our hormones, getting in the way of our fertility and starting to cause cancers and the level of its permanence.
I mean, all of this, we are gonna hear a lot more about plastic in the years ahead. There are some things to be optimistic about. You know, the opportunities for a sustainable food and land system. If we just do some simple things that are also good for our health, like reduce the level of meat and dairy in the global food supply, and especially in developed countries like the US and the UK and so on, that's a real win.
It's a bit of a cultural change, but it's a massive win. And then if I'm gonna pick one other thing that surprised me. It's probably a piece of research in 125 countries in which everybody was asked, would you be prepared to give up 1% of your wealth to deal with climate change? And on average, 69% of people said, yep.
But in every single one of those. 125 countries, there's a very big gap between how much people were prepared to act on climate and how much everybody thought their fellow countrymen were prepared to act. Everybody underestimated by a long way. The extent to which the people around them are also thinking crumbs, this is a crisis.
We've gotta do something about it. And it relates to my own personal experiment. So I talk to thousands and thousands of business people in conferences and so on, and I've started asking, I've done this with thousands of people now in about 30 or 40 different. Conference meetings. I lay out the poly crisis as I see it, and I just ask people to put up their hands.
If you think it's about as serious as I've described it, put up your hand. Or if you think I've fundamentally exaggerated the seriousness, put up your hand. And I do encourage people to be brave on that one. And if you think I've fundamentally under it, put up your hand and every single time. Every single time.
The vast majority of people think that I've got it about right, but there's always more people who think I've underestimated the seriousness than overestimated the seriousness. So I get people to keep their hands up in the air and look around because. What's surprising to people is they don't realize that everyone else gets it too.
So we're all kind of sitting here. We know there's a problem, we wanna act, but everybody's kind of just waiting for everyone else because it's so uncomfortable to be the first mover. That's what it's. Like for us as humans, if you think back to the days of lockdown, I remember how uncomfortable it felt if you were ever the only person in the room not wearing a face mask or the only person in the room wearing a face mask, right either way round, whatever the rights and wrongs.
It felt uncomfortable to be the only one. And we're all like this on climate. So I'm gonna ask all listeners to take heart from the knowledge that actually everyone around them is thinking this too.
Gil: We talked about a pretty grim diagnosis from your book, but throughout and certainly at the end, you do end on a hopeful note.
There's a humility that comes through in all your assertions, where does your sense of hope come personally?
Mike: So I think it's really important to try and describe things accurately. I don't believe in sugar coating things to make people feel more comfortable, and I don't believe in exaggerating for kind of dramatic effects.
So I'm gonna describe it, you know, as I see it so. There's no doubt we are careering into a poly crisis. We are accelerating into it. We're making things worse by a greater extent, every year than we did the year before overall. And we've been asleep on the job for decades, and as a result, we are now heading for a pretty.
Bad place. Now there's sort of uncertainty over the exact timing and the exact way that that manifests itself, but it's clear cut that we're heading in a bad way. That doesn't mean it's inevitable, and I don't know how bad things might get and we might still get away with it. It's clear cut. We won't, if we stay asleep, we won't.
But if we wake up now and take fast action, we might mitigate the worst of it for sure. And if we are very lucky, we might still manage to create a future that over the next decades is better than the humans have ever known it. It's still possible with luck. If you look at where we're going at the moment, and I've gotta say, some of the developments in global politics and national politics have not been.
Cause for greater optimism. If you look at that, you know, I would say there are still plenty to be cheerful for and grateful for in life, almost wherever we're heading, right?
Gil: That's right. So
Mike: I'm still pleased to be alive
Gil: and the, come on, I, I expect more stiff upper lipin all come on. I'm expecting more of my brethren across the pond.
Mike: Yeah. So, you know, if you want psychological health, if you wanna feel good, it feels good to be doing the right thing. Almost no matter how bad the situation is, if we know we're doing the right thing, we can feel good about it. And I think it hangs around us psychologically at the moment that we know that science is saying we've gotta live differently.
The Anthropocene demands. An evolution of humanity, a new way for us to carry ourselves, and yet we're carrying on living As ever. The media is implying that we should just carry on business as normal. That's the overall flavor. Most of the time for most of the media, the advertising industry is persuading us to do all sorts of things that are against our best interests and one way or another, so far we haven't succeeded in making that switch, but if we do, we will feel great about it.
And social tipping points can happen very, very quickly, and the conditions for that tipping point are definitely building. So to come back to that evidence, you know, my anecdotal evidence of everybody putting their hand up and that research about the willingness of people in 125 countries, you know, we are all sitting there waiting for everybody else to say, hang on a second this way we live at the moment.
The emperor's not wearing any clothes. It's gotta change. And that could happen. Overnight. If you wanna ask me what gives me, cause for most optimism is the potential for that kind of change. It is possible, and if it happens, it will feel brilliant. It'll feel like we've lifted a lead weight off our shoulders.
We will walk around with a spring in our stride and it'll be so exciting.
Gil: I'm thinking a lot about what my grandmother used to tell me. She would say, uh, we are depleted but not defeated. And that's been ringing true the last couple months especially.
Mike: So, I mean, there's a lot of scientists like me who kind of, we've got stuck in this rut.
Of complaining that listen to us, listen to us, and nobody's listening, you know, every year. And then we find a different language to complain a bit more loudly, and then nobody listens and we just get more frustrated. And I think it's easy to kind of imagine ourselves on our deathbeds, just kind of grumpily saying, well, I told you so and it.
Doesn't need to be like that. I mean, that's why I wrote this book, right? I wrote this book because if what we're doing is not working, we've gotta stand back. We've gotta see the problem from a greater distance. We've gotta get under the skin of it further. We've gotta identify the point of greatest leverage.
And what's been holding us back is we've had too much deceit in the system. And if we can change the dial on that, if we can insist on higher standards of honesty, then. We can really start to get somewhere for the first time. And I'll just use a quick analogy, right, which is that I'm know quite how the culture is in the US at the moment, but in the uk, if you're a media presenter and you are found to have grope to colleague, that is, it's the end of your career.
And if you are found to have stood by in the knowledge that one of your colleagues was doing that, that's the end of your career as well, right? 'cause we the public have decided it's disgusting, we're not having it, and you're out. And we can have that. Same culture around deceit, right? If a politician is found to have willfully tried to trick the public into believing something that they didn't themselves believe, then that says they're unfit for the role and we need them out, and that's the culture that we can cultivate.
It's within our power, right? There's so much evidence that humans are capable of cultivating the values and the culture that they need in order to thrive, and that is a value that we need right now, like crazy if we are going to thrive through the next decade or two and beyond.
Gil: Here, here. Your American brother.
I needed to hear that.
Mike: Okay. Just one thing to say about the book is that in a way it's so simple. Like yes. It's like, duh. I'm just saying we need honest No, but it's
Gil: elegant. Yes. And it's that point. That's why I wanted to talk to you. So are you ready for the quick fire hot seat lightning round? There are no wrong answers.
Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll do my best. Yeah. All right. So. Your brother, sir Tim invented the worldwide web, which is a prime real estate for enticing bullshit that we were talking about earlier in the conversation. Does this come up at family dinners?
Mike: Well, nearly all the time we talk about
family stuff.
Okay. All right. But I think, well, one thing we can agree on is that technology can have unintended consequences and humanity needs to get much more careful about how it deploys technology, which technology it deploys, when and how, in order to be more careful about making sure they're good for people and planet.
Gil: Okay, here's another provocative one. You're both a professor and and a consultant. You speak to businesses a lot. You've done a lot of work on carbon accounting, but with this latest text as a consultant to help big companies with their carbon accounting and so forth, do you ever feel like you're a truth therapist for climate hypocrites?
Mike: Well, you know what? The easiest way of making a living as a consultant is to tell your client. More or less exactly what they want to hear. A point of differentiation, I like to think for my company, small World Consulting, is that we tell our clients right from the start, we are gonna say it like it is, right?
We are not gonna sugarcoat things and we are gonna be as supportive as we can of you in. Dealing with the issues as we genuinely see them. And I actually think, I like to hope it's actually, I don't wanna frame up, um, what's going on in the world today as a commercial opportunity for us, but I like to think it's a differentiator.
But I do think it's a real challenge. Like if you're running a business like we're trying to run, trying to have real integrity, it is always a question, at what point might you be. Unwittingly colluding in a piece of greenwash, and we just have to try and be as alert as we possibly can, and we have to make some bold decisions.
You know, there's some companies that we don't work with, and just very occasionally there's a company where we have to say, look, we're gonna have to part ways because we don't fundamentally believe enough in the authenticity of this. It's incumbent on environmental consultants to be very straight talking right now.
Gil: Between the detailed end notes and the chunky appendices, were you worried at any point that readers might need to lie down and have a strong cup of tea or coffee to get through the, uh, depth?
Mike: No. The book's written in a sort of chassy way, in a way, yeah. It's, it's full of end notes. The compendium. Yeah.
It needs to be robust. I mean, it was so much work to write. I've got this fantastic assistant. She did so much work shoring up end notes and, you know, doing so many details and so many experts fed into it as well. So sometimes what feels like, you know, a lightweight, chatty paragraph has actually had an enormous amount of effort going into just making sure that the nuances bob on and is accurate.
Gil: This strikes me that it'll stand the test of time. Um, whoever's picking the titles for your books too, uh, I imagine you have a hand in that your other, your previous works were, how bad are bananas and there's no Planet B.
Mike: Well, there's a whole team of us at Small World chipping in on this, and I mean, we have draft titles go up on the wall and everybody's saying what they think and draft graphics and then the publishers chipping in and all my friends are chipping in and my wife is good on color schemes. I mean, it's a process.
I do think, I do think the title and the cover matter.
Gil: Totally agree. Maybe one more to end. Um, one of the things I liked in your book, and it came through in this conversation, is you advocate a lot for kindness alongside truth and that resonated with me personally because every day when I drop my 7-year-old off at school, I tell 'em three things I say.
Be kind, be joyful, and always tell the truth. So, of course your book resonate with me, but what are your most cherished words to live by?
Mike: Well, I love the, the message that you gave to your child every day, and if, uh, all people of America took that message into their daily lives, then you know that to get us somewhere. That'd be great. So what I think, I mean, I spell out three values in the book that I try and live by. I. So respect the environment.
We've all really gotta do that. I'm not as good as it as I would like to be. But by the way, another part of this mantra is don't beat yourself up for your shortcomings, but don't let yourself off the hook either. Like we're all imperfect. Don't let perfection get in the way of the good. Well, we could just gotta do our best.
But you mentioned kindness, and I haven't talked about it enough yet, perhaps on this podcast because. In the book, there's a simple value that we need to respect. All humans fundamentally of equal value as human beings, whoever they are, whether they're a president or a road sweeper, whatever the color of their skin, whatever country they live in, and even whatever they've done.
I think it's just a fundamental value, and the reason we've gotta have that value is because there's 8 billion of us on this planet right now, and we will thrive. Otherwise together, right? It's a must have value. It's just for practical purposes. We need it. And right now. When I first started talking about that value, it felt almost too obvious to need saying, but right now it is being challenged.
There are people explicitly saying things like, oh, I think more white men should be making the decisions and such and such country first. Well, that implies everybody else not as valuable. And whether you live in Israel or Gaza or Ukraine or Russia or the United States or Europe or China or wherever you are of equal value, and we've gotta start establishing and insisting on that value.
It's a challenge because we are so far away from it at the moment, both within and between countries. A lot of people in the United Kingdom at the moment are not frankly treated with great respect and I. If I'm honest, the problem in the United States is even worse understatement of of, of this conversation.
Yes. Yeah. And we gotta sort that out, right? We gotta sort that out and so. The word kindness. You know, that's a simple way of saying it, right? We need to be kind, and I don't mean it in a fluffy way sometimes. You've gotta be pretty strong and firm to be kind, but we've gotta treat everybody with respect by that.
I include even the people that we are most unhappy with. Even the people that we think have a most destructive influence on the world, we should treat them with a firm respect as well.
Gil: Well, thank you so much. Uh, I really enjoyed the book and I encourage our listeners to pick it up.
I really enjoyed this conversation.
Mike: Thanks so much. Yeah, thanks for
Gil: asking Good questions.
Gil: If you enjoyed this week's podcast, please leave us a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. It really helps us reach more listeners. You can also let us know what you thought via Twitter @ClimatePosiPod, or email us at climate positive@hasi.com. I'm Gil Jenkins and this is Climate Positive.