Best of: 2C or not 2C? That is the question. Climate summits as Shakespeare would see them.
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.7 • 219 Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In fractured times, what does it take to reach agreement? That’s the question writers Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson set out to explore in a play about the drama of climate negotiations. Kyoto, which ran at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon this summer, tells the story of the 1997 Kyoto Summit as seen through the eyes of Don Pearlman, a notorious fossil fuel lobbyist and chain-smoking lawyer dubbed “the high priest of the Carbon Club” by der Speigel. Actor Stephen Kunken, who plays Pearlman, tells Akshat Rathi why he was drawn to the character, and what Kyoto can teach us about how agreement is achieved. This episode first ran in July 2024.
Explore further:
- Past episode with Al Gore about breaking the petrostates stranglehold on climate progress
- Past episode about climate change storytelling with Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Ministry for the Future
- Past episode with Extrapolations writer and executive producer Dorothy Fortenberry about the growing demand for climate stories
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Alicia Clanton, Anna Mazarakis, 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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Akshed. We are on the cusp of COP 29 and the US election, and so we wanted to bring |
| 0:06.1 | you a favorite past episode that feels particularly timely right now, even though it's looking at |
| 0:12.4 | events that happened nearly 30 years ago. We made this show in July. It's about a play that |
| 0:18.1 | dramatizes the 1997 climate summit in Kyoto. |
| 0:22.6 | That meeting, COP 3, was historic for reasons you'll hear. |
| 0:28.2 | COP 29, taking place in Azerbaijan the week after next, is likely to be historic too. |
| 0:34.2 | One thing we'll be watching for at COP 29 is what direction the U.S. takes after its people have elected a new president. |
| 0:42.6 | If that president is Donald Trump, it could have disastrous consequences for global climate diplomacy. |
| 0:49.2 | You might remember what my colleague Jen DeLuhi told me about this last month. |
| 0:53.3 | Trump could actually go further and abandon the UNF-Triple-C, |
| 0:58.4 | the framework convention on climate change that underpins it. |
| 1:01.7 | And if leaving Paris is a potentially temporary blow to climate diplomacy, |
| 1:05.5 | then leaving the UNF-Triple-C would be a figurative bomb in climate diplomacy with years of fallout. |
| 1:10.8 | And what's, you know, interesting about this is truly the potentially long repercussions for |
| 1:16.4 | the U.S. and for the world. |
| 1:18.3 | You can find a link to that episode in the show notes. |
| 1:21.5 | And by the way, next week we'll be putting out our episode on Friday instead of Thursday |
| 1:26.3 | because there's a big election happening. |
| 1:29.8 | For now, enjoy the episode about Kyoto. |
| 1:33.7 | Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. This week, climate negotiations as entertainment. This sentence. |
| 1:51.2 | Countries are urged to take immediate actions to control the risks of climate change. |
| 1:56.4 | Surely we can all agree on this. |
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