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Whitney Pennington Rodgers:
Marcelo Mena is an environmentalist,
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a scholar,
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and he is the former
Minister of Environment for Chile.
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Welcome, Marcelo.
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Marcelo Mena: How are you doing, Whitney.
Thanks for the invitation.
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WPR: Perfect. Great.
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Of course, thank you so much
for being with us here today.
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And you know, before we dive
into the future of climate action
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in Chile and beyond,
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I think it would be great for us
to talk about the present,
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and why Chile really represents
a country that is worth thinking about
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when we talk about climate.
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You know, recently there have been
lots of commendable actions
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taken by your country
when we think about climate.
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Chile recently committed
to net zero emissions by 2050,
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the first in the Americas to do this,
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and that's especially notable
when you think about
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how much of Chile's economy
really depends on carbon emissions:
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mining, agriculture, and spaces like that.
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So could you start a little bit
by just talking about
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how would this even be possible
to get to net zero emissions in 30 years,
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and what would that mean for Chile?
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MM: It was a very surreal image
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when we saw Minister Schmidt,
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the COP25 president,
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Patricia Espinosa,
the UN head on climate change,
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with masks delivering this new NDC.
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The important thing here is things
that are hard to build require consensus,
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but therefore to get rid
of that commitment,
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you need to have another consensus.
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This hasn't happened,
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so I think is, the reason why Chile
has a sort of vision towards mitigation
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that's ambitious
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is that we see that there's
a big economic benefit.
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We have seen, we've witnessed,
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what the renewable energy sector
has been able to do for investment,
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for lowering energy costs,
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and so therefore to reach this goal
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we will inevitably expand
to 100 percent renewable,
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but we'll also transform our industry,
which is heavy on fossil fuels,
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towards low emissions,
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with the hydrogen economy kicking in,
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with a recently launched committee
that I formed, that Minister Jobet,
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the Minister of Energy, set up.
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And also energy efficiency
and a lot of capture, carbon capture.
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We are endowed with
a lot of natural capital.
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Taking care of that natural capital
and expanding plantations
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will allow us to reach net zero by 2050.
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WPR: That's great.
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And now it seems like Chile
has such a huge focus, then,
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in thinking about renewable energy
and thinking about climate.
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But this wasn't always the case.
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Could you talk a little bit, I guess,
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about the history of how Chile
arrived at this moment?
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MM: Yeah, so in 2011, 2010,
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we had an energy discussion
with incumbents
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saying the only way we could solve
our energy problems
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will be through large coal
and large hydro in Patagonia.
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And that really polarized the discussion.
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We got together as a community
after large protests
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that triggered a lot of social movements,
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and we started discussing
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how we should be able
to do our energy going forward.
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The population, public unrest,
set up almost 6,000 megawatts
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of coal fired power plants
to never be built.
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And when the government,
Michelle Bachelet's government came in,
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we pulled the plug on HidroAysén project,
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which is a big hydro project
in the Patagonia.
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And both of these conditions
enabled an opportunity
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for renewable energy to be set in.
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We put in carbon taxes,
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we put in environmental regulations,
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and we set up an energy strategy
that we did building on discussing
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and looking at the data
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in which we thought that
the 70 percent renewable energy by 2050
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was going to be a target
that we could agree on.
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This target has been long surpassed.
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Now we're thinking of reaching
that same goal by 2030.
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WPR: And what you were saying
about social protests,
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that's something that a lot of people
maybe have been following
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news of what's going in Chile
are familiar with recent social protests,
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and I think I'm curious about
how you see that factoring in
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to climate action moving forward.
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How might these social protests
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play a role in what
climate action you see?
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And, really, how is it possible for Chile
to be a leader in climate action
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while also struggling
with some of these social issues?
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MM: Well, the social issues,
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which are very profound
and important to address,
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caused, for example, COP25
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to not be able to be held in Santiago,
and to go to Madrid.
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And this also shifted a whole bunch
of the discussions and announcements
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that were done
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and we were expecting to have.
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But regardless of this,
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the fact that we have this commitment
from the government today
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shows that there's a resolution
to continue forward.
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But really the model,
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the economic model of Chile,
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was brought into question,
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because the environmental issues,
for example, are quite widespread,
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and many times you have
large coal-fired power plants
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being situated where people live
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and with higher mortality rates.
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Somebody who lives
where a power plant is installed
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has twice the rate of death
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in comparison to other people in Chile.
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So the model of having many people
be impacted for the benefit of few
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is something that caused
and triggered the social unrest.
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And it goes into the economic model itself
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of extracting, colluding,
impacting communities
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that may not see the benefits
of these economic activities.
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So while we've done a lot,
we've come a long way,
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for example in securing
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a very emblematic agreement
to phase out coal-fired power plants,
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many people that this
wasn't done fast enough
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and want this action to be brought faster.
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WPR: And it sounds like having people
be the voice and the engine
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behind making that happen
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has really been part
of this historical thread
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with climate action in Chile
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and seems like it would really
lead things moving into the future.
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MM: No, definitely -- yes.
Go ahead. Sorry.
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WPR: Go ahead. Please go ahead.
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We have a little bit of a delay.
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MM: Starting out, we are doing well,
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but I think we need
to double down our commitments.
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So even though
we have ministries involved,
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we have civil society involved,
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we need to bring in
the mainstream industry.
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I think, for example, the mining sector
has a great opportunity
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to be the solution
for the environmental issues,
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because we provide the copper,
the cobalt, the lithium
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that are required for solar PV panels,
for battery storage.
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But we need to do this in a clean manner.
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I think that's the biggest challenge
we're going to have
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in the next 20 years ahead.
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WPR: And sort of pivoting to the pandemic
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and to thinking about what's going,
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right now the entire world has obviously
been devastated by this crisis.
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What have been some of the unique
challenges that Chile has faced
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during this pandemic?
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MM: Well, definitely, as anybody,
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we are always struggling within
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taking actions today to prevent
a deeper impact in the future.
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And we started off pretty well.
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We shut off schools.
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We shut off different cities
and had a quarantine.
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But we gave the wrong signals to people
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and we didn't have a consistent effort,
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and this has brought us to have
the highest infection rates per capita
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in the world these days.
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So this goes to show that,
the same parallels with climate change.
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We need to take action now
to prevent deeper impact later.
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And I think we need
to take the lesson of this
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to continue with an effort,
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because one thing is to announce
an ambitious NDC.
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Another thing is to invest and do
the regulations that you require
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to turn this into reality.
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But there are some things
that are interesting.
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The pollution in Santiago,
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which is one of the most polluted capitals
historically in Latin America,
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has dropped substantially.
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The car-related emissions
are down almost 80 to 90 percent,
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which is pretty substantive.
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And we look at the example
of what's going on.
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Harvard University showed a study
in which they showed
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higher mortality rates
for more polluted cities.
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And this is also the case in Chile.
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For every microgram of pollution, PM2.5,
there is an increase of the fatality rate
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of nine percent.
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But the thing is, we could also look back
at what we've achieved up to now.
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Had we not taken
measures to clean the air,
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as we've done in Chile
these last 20 years,
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we would be talking about five times
more people would have died from COVID.
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We have around 800 people
that have died due to COVID directly,
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but this would have been much higher
had we not taken action.
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And in fact, due to the lower pollution,
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if we estimate and predict this
to the rest of the year,
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we will have saved as many lives
reducing the pollution
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as we have lost in COVID,
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showing that there's a pandemic
that we also need to address,
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which is the crisis on air pollution
that suffocates many cities in the world.
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WPR: And it seems like that's probably
something that we're seeing
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in other areas around the world.
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As you're suggesting,
air pollution is a problem everywhere.
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And I'm curious also
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how these challenges
that you've mentioned, and maybe others,
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might hinder or help
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some of this progress
that you're hoping to make
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towards climate action.
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How do you see this factoring in
to some of the decisions
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that might be made going forward
in Chile and beyond?
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MM: OK, so we have a higher fatality rate
and more polluted cities,
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and we have a climate action to carry out.
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This is going to be a decisive decade,
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in which we need to lay the groundwork
for our lower emissions strategies.
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So whatever we do today cannot lock us
into an incompatible climate future.
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We need to lay the groundwork
for this low emissions transition.
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So therefore, our green
recovery efforts need to be done,
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as ?? spoke last week,
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has to be related to a green recovery
that creates jobs immediately,
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that addresses the poverty issues
that we have on energy
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today in southern Chile,
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and we need to use this
for expanding renewable energy
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and expanding the successful efforts
that we've done on electromobility.
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Today, we have the largest fleet
of electric buses outside of China,
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but we could actually
make this go even bigger,
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because we've seen
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that the reductions in cost
have been almost 70 percent
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in comparison to diesel buses,
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so to use this opportunity to expand.
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And multiple stakeholders are working.
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We're working together
to call on the government
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to do a green recovery,
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to use the green bonds
that we've already issued
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and under which we've gotten
really low rates for interest rates,
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to do and fund cleaning the air,
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cleaning the transportation,
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and laying the groundwork for
a cleaner tomorrow in the mining sector,
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which is our biggest
challenge going forward.
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WPR: And