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Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.7 • 219 Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How do we keep climate action alive in a fracturing world? “Today we live in an age where we actually have the solutions– technologically, economically, financially speaking– but what we are not doing is acting on them,” Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Development Program tells Akshat Rathi. In a conversation recorded at COP29, Steiner talked about how some countries– including Uruguay, India, Kenya, China, and Bhutan– are moving forward with innovative climate solutions even when international financing isn’t readily available. He also called on the developed world to find better ways to fund sustainable development.
Explore further:
- Past episode with climate finance expert Avinash Persaud about getting money to the places that need it
- Past episode with Achim Steiner about the role of the UN Development Program
- Past episode with science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson about the role of the United Nations
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Sharon Chen and Jessica Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. |
| 0:02.0 | This week, we think about progress. |
| 0:05.0 | I've been reporting on climate change for more than eight years. It's not because I care about an invisible gas in the atmosphere or about the mercury levels in a scientist's thermometer. |
| 0:28.6 | But because of what climate change could do to slow down the progress that humanity has achieved over the past two centuries. |
| 0:36.6 | And as I keep reporting on what the world is doing to tackle climate change, |
| 0:40.3 | I keep coming back to the question of human progress. |
| 0:43.3 | At the start of 2025, with the staggering fires in Los Angeles |
| 0:48.3 | and a range of climate leaders stepping down, it doesn't feel like progress. |
| 0:53.3 | It feels like regressress or perhaps something darker. |
| 0:58.2 | But it's a narrative that we should be careful not to fall for. That's the message from |
| 1:03.6 | Akeem Steiner, the head of the United Nations Development Program, who I got a chance to talk to |
| 1:08.8 | at COP29 in November. He said that progress is happening |
| 1:13.5 | and there are many places in the world where you can see it. We talked about many of them. He's not |
| 1:20.1 | denying that there are growing problems around the world, but he says that he has also never felt |
| 1:26.0 | more optimistic about the human capacity to address them. |
| 1:30.7 | This is the second time Akeem is on the show. |
| 1:33.6 | Previously, he made a passionate case for what humanity must do to thrive on this warming planet. |
| 1:38.9 | This time, he shared what's working and made the case for how to make it work better. |
| 1:56.5 | Akeem, welcome to the show. |
| 1:58.0 | It's good to be back with you. |
| 1:59.3 | Thank you, Akhan. |
| 2:00.3 | Now, since we spoke 18 months ago, |
... |
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