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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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    and 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 and 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: Mm-hmm. It was a very surreal image
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    when we saw Minister Schmidt,
    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 the thing 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,
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    that Minister Jobet,
    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
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    with incumbents saying the only way
    we could solve our energy problems
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    will be through large coal
    and large hydro in the 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 the 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 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
    to not be able to be held in Santiago
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    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 weren't 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 economic model of Chile
    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, polluting,
    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 --
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    we've come a long way, for example,
    in securing a very emblematic agreement
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    to phase out coal-fired power plants --
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    many people feel 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, and we will continue.
    Yes, go ahead. Sorry.
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    WPR: Go ahead. Please go ahead.
    We have a little bit of a delay.
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    MM: Going forward, we're going to be ...
    Starting out, we are doing well,
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    but I think we need
    to double down on 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 on right now,
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    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
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    in which they showed 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 in
    to 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 Kristalina [Georgieva] 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 that the reductions
    in cost have been almost 70 percent
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    in comparison to diesel buses.
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    So we should 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 then as far as the way
    that you think about
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    and conceptualize climate action,
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    have you personally
    had any changes to your thinking,
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    just as a result of what
    you're seeing through this pandemic?
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    MM: Yeah, I think we start looking around,
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    everybody had to struggle and find
    that we could do much more with less,
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    and keeping a full economy
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    that requires you to buy
    an extra t-shirt that you don't need,
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    the fact that we're using
    three times more clothes
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    than we were maybe 20 years ago
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    shows that we are blowing up
    an economy that requires us
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    to destroy the environment, in a way,
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    to continue forward.
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    And the food system is going to be
    probably our biggest challenge,
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    and even though I've been working
    with electric buses and electromobility
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    and just the more conventional mitigation,
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    I think our biggest cultural challenge
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    will be to talk about
    how our food decisions
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    impact the way that we will have a future.
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    "Nature" just put out a report
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    that showed something that when we were
    in the government, we had talked about.
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    When Chile was good in soccer,
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    we started going deeper
    into the wintertime contests,
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    and we started winning games.
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    But to win those games,
    we started doing a lot of barbecues,
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    and the paper that came out
    showed something that,
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    when we explained this to people,
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    that you guys are messing up
    the air with barbecues,
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    people thought we were crazy.
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    Well, the "Nature" report now shows
    that we actually fouled the air
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    and destroyed the air,
    annihilated the air,
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    because we wanted
    to celebrate the soccer.
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    And we set this up to people,
    and people thought we were crazy.
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    Now people acknowledge the fact
    that the basic things that you could do,
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    such as the way that
    you choose how to cook,
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    could actually impact your air.
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    So I think going forward these
    cultural challenges that we need to do,
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    we need to tackle them head-on.
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    We should need to show the evidence.
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    Otherwise, we're just going
    to be ignoring problems
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    and letting them
    perpetuate for the future.
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    WPR: And, you know, for nations
    who have not really prioritized climate
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    in the same way that Chile has,
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    are there lessons that
    you think can be learned
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    from some of the choices
    that Chile has made in recent years
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    that other nations can apply,
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    and how could folks in other countries
    implement some of these strategies
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    that you implemented in Chile?
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    MM: So, many people in the US
    and across the world
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    know about the Chilean sea bass.
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    The Chilean sea bass was overfished
    and almost collapsed.
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    One of the things that we did under
    the support from "National Geographic"
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    and with the leadership
    of President Bachelet
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    was to expand marine protection,
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    from four percent of our oceans
    to 43 percent within one government,
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    which is the largest leap.
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    There's only comparison to the US
    during Obama in terms of protection.
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    And this is because we want
    this population also to recover.
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    You know, when you
    let the park stop fishing,
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    the overflow from the fishing
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    will actually increase
    the biomass sixfold.
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    So I think one of the efforts
    that we need to do
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    as we talk about
    the biodiversity convention
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    that's going to happen this next year
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    is that we need to change
    our relationship to the environment.
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    We need to protect
    and conserve our ecosystems,
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    so they provide the services
    that they do today.
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    Today, 96 percent of all mammals,
    land mammals,
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    are humans or stuff humans eat.
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    Only four percent
    of land mammals are wild.
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    When I heard that data,
    from "National Geographic,"
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    for the first time,
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    I couldn't believe it.
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    We've changed our relationship
    with the planet,
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    and we're suffering these decisions
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    because we see zoonotic diseases --
    not just coronavirus --
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    spread time after time.
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    WPR: And we have Bruno here -- hi, Bruno
    -- with a question from the community.
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    Bruno Giussani: Hi.
    Absolutely. Hello, Marcelo.
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    This is a question from Melissa Mahoney.
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    She asks if you can expand on
    what economic benefits
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    of net-zero emissions are.
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    And especially, could those benefits
    be the same for Chile
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    and for other countries?
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    MM: Good.
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    For example, when I worked
    in the World Bank,
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    we supported Chile to look into
    the macroeconomic impacts
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    of the net-zero target.
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    And it was shown that Chile
    will grow 4.4 percent more.
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    So we turned the risk of climate change,
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    and we turned it into an opportunity
    of expanded growth.
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    This manifests in lower
    transportation costs,
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    lower energy costs,
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    and this makes the economy
    more competitive.
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    The costs of reaching the net-zero target
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    are much lower than the benefits
    that we will have to reap.
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    And we're not even talking
    about cleaner air benefits,
  • 15:57 - 16:00
    we're talking about
    direct economic benefits
  • 16:00 - 16:01
    of having increased investments,
  • 16:01 - 16:04
    which is something that every country
    will require in these years
  • 16:04 - 16:06
    to recover from the COVID crisis,
  • 16:06 - 16:08
    and lower energy costs.
  • 16:08 - 16:09
    So that's how it manifests,
  • 16:09 - 16:11
    and this is a consensus today
  • 16:11 - 16:13
    that we need to have more renewable energy
  • 16:13 - 16:17
    because this is the way that we've had
    cleaner air and lower energy costs.
  • 16:18 - 16:26
    BG: There is another question
    from someone in the audience, asking,
  • 16:26 - 16:30
    "Countries across Latin America
    have very different attitudes on climate.
  • 16:30 - 16:31
    Can you comment on that?"
  • 16:33 - 16:36
    MM: So Pew Research Center
    has been putting out reports
  • 16:36 - 16:40
    regarding what is the main
    external threat that you have.
  • 16:40 - 16:43
    And in Europe, in the US,
  • 16:43 - 16:45
    the biggest threat
    was either China or ISIS
  • 16:46 - 16:48
    or some external bellicose threat.
  • 16:48 - 16:51
    In Latin America and Africa,
    it's climate change, number one,
  • 16:51 - 16:55
    and Chile is one of the highest,
    with 86 percent of Chileans
  • 16:55 - 16:58
    saying that climate change
    is the greatest external threat.
  • 16:58 - 17:02
    And this is also very high
    across the region.
  • 17:02 - 17:07
    We could have populist governments
    coming in, changing their priorities,
  • 17:07 - 17:09
    but the reality is, people are concerned,
  • 17:09 - 17:12
    because they see the threat
    of climate change every day,
  • 17:12 - 17:15
    and regardless of whether
    the national government believes in it,
  • 17:15 - 17:16
    climate change is real
  • 17:16 - 17:19
    and is causing impacts
    and causing poverty in the region.
  • 17:20 - 17:22
    BG: Thank you, Marcelo.
    Back to you, Whitney.
  • 17:23 - 17:24
    WPR: Thank you. Thank you, Bruno.
  • 17:24 - 17:28
    And Marcelo, just one last question
    before we actually say goodbye,
  • 17:28 - 17:32
    which is just, knowing that you
    were involved in the negotiations
  • 17:32 - 17:33
    for the Paris Agreement,
  • 17:33 - 17:36
    are there things that you take
    from that experience
  • 17:36 - 17:38
    that you can apply to this moment
  • 17:38 - 17:41
    as we think about emerging
    from this crisis
  • 17:41 - 17:43
    and coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic?
  • 17:45 - 17:46
    MM: Yes,
  • 17:46 - 17:50
    that there will always be a populist
    that will be opposing climate action,
  • 17:50 - 17:53
    and the way to get at this
    is to make the economic case,
  • 17:53 - 17:55
    so regardless of what happens,
  • 17:55 - 17:58
    there will be an economic case
    for spending on renewable energy.
  • 17:58 - 18:02
    The US grew its renewable energy
    investments around 40 percent last year.
  • 18:02 - 18:04
    In Brazil, it grew almost 10 percent.
  • 18:04 - 18:07
    And so therefore, if we are able
    to align the economic goals
  • 18:07 - 18:08
    with climate goals,
  • 18:08 - 18:11
    you will be able to make this go forward.
  • 18:11 - 18:15
    There's the Network for Greening
    the Financial System
  • 18:15 - 18:17
    that puts together central bankers.
  • 18:17 - 18:21
    The World Bank launched a coalition
    of finance ministers for climate action.
  • 18:21 - 18:23
    These are great efforts
  • 18:23 - 18:27
    that will allow us to have the financial
    system support climate action
  • 18:27 - 18:30
    because there's an economic benefit,
  • 18:30 - 18:33
    because it's important for you,
    for your fiduciary responsibilities,
  • 18:33 - 18:35
    to disclose the risks you have,
  • 18:35 - 18:37
    both transitionally and physically.
  • 18:37 - 18:39
    And if we are able to do this,
  • 18:39 - 18:41
    regardless of what negotiations happen,
  • 18:41 - 18:46
    because there will always be
    problems with the consensus,
  • 18:46 - 18:49
    you will continue to have
    a resilient approach
  • 18:49 - 18:50
    because climate action will continue
  • 18:51 - 18:53
    because you can have
    the economic system support this.
  • 18:55 - 18:56
    WPR: That's really great.
  • 18:56 - 18:58
    Thank you so much, Marcelo,
    for being with us
  • 18:58 - 19:00
    to share your perspective
    and your insight.
  • 19:00 - 19:04
    It's really great to sort of zoom in
    on some of the things happening in Chile
  • 19:04 - 19:07
    and how that might apply
    to all of us all over the world.
  • 19:07 - 19:09
    Thank you for joining us today.
  • 19:09 - 19:09
    MM: Thanks.
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

English subtitles

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