COP29 has been a disappointment so far, with little concrete action agreed by delegates to cut emissions. CGTN Razor’s Neil Cairns says a longstanding mathematical equation (Risk = probability x cost) is key to why countries should act. But there is room for hope, with the cost of transition to net zero shrinking and China leading the charge towards renewable energy.
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00:00It's been a disappointing summit, nothing much in the way of agreement.
00:05We've got now a climate-denying President-elect in the United States
00:10who says climate change is a hoax.
00:12We've had President Mila of Argentina walk out.
00:15It's made me reflect on way back in the dark ages
00:19when I was doing my environmental science degree,
00:22an equation we were taught very early on,
00:25the risk management equation, which is right there.
00:28It's risk equals probability times cost,
00:31or put in a more simple method, risk equals likelihood times impact.
00:38So the import of that equation is that even if you believe
00:44the probability that climate change is human-made is very low,
00:49the costs, the impacts, the consequences are so catastrophically high
00:54for us as a species, and indeed every other species on the planet,
00:58that even though that probability, even if you believe it's vanishingly small,
01:03the impacts, the costs are up there near infinite
01:07in terms of how they will affect us.
01:09So risk, therefore, is very high.
01:12So you should act anyway, even if you're not 100% sure
01:16that it's caused by human beings or not.
01:19So a disappointing summit then, in your words.
01:22Has there been any good news?
01:24There is some good news.
01:25We're seeing, as Jamie reported last week,
01:2838% of China's energy last year was created by renewables.
01:34Even a decade ago, we would have found that surprising, I think.
01:37And the good news is that the cost of the transition to renewables
01:41is looking increasingly like it may get cheaper
01:44than was originally envisaged.
01:46So we can almost turn that equation around.
01:48The cost of transition, the probability being high
01:52that the cost could be low,
01:54that risk goes down when we transfer to renewables.
01:58And so there's good news there.
02:01And even if you were to stick with the status quo,
02:04$52 trillion, it's estimated by The Economist this week,
02:07is needed to just stick with oil and gas.
02:11So there is no reason not to spend a great percentage of that money
02:15on green technologies.