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The economic benefits of climate action

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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
Title:
The economic benefits of climate action
Speaker:
Marcelo Mena
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
19:22

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