Canada's Controversial Queen of Green - Ep131: Tzeporah Berman

Transcript

Michael Liebreich

So, Tzeporah, thank you so much for joining us here today on Cleaning Up.

Tzeporah Berman

Thanks for having me.

Now, you have been called the "Queen of Green." You've also been called a lot of other ruder things - eco-terrorist, I believe? But where we'll start is, why don't you describe who you are, what you do, in your own words?

I've been working for the last 30 years on environmental policy, climate policy and advocacy. In a lot of ways, for me, it's just been a journey in trying to understand what makes social change; how we can make the changes that we need to make. And so, I've designed advocacy campaigns, I've advised governments on policy... I've done a lot of different things. I've negotiated with some of the largest corporations in the world.

And you are joining us from Canada, so that is where you started. But you've also spent time elsewhere?

Yeah, I'm from Canada. I live right now in Vancouver, in the unceded territory of the Squamish, the Tsleil-Waututh and the Musqueam First Nations, and I love it here. But over the years, I've spent time in the United States; I lived in San Francisco for six years when I was founding ForestEthics, which is now called Stand.Earth. Because the US was the largest market for Canadian wood products, and I was working on the conservation of old-growth forests, and greening the trade of wooden paper products, years ago now, 30 years ago. And I also spent time in Europe; for a while I was the co-director of Greenpeace International's Climate Program in 40 countries, and so I lived in Amsterdam. So, I've had the great opportunity to live in some great cities.

Now, I actually went back into my archives to try and find out when we first met, and it was when you had just gone off to be the co-director of Global Climate Change and Energy at Greenpeace. And we were introduced by, I think, a good mutual friend - Wal van Lierop.

Oh, that's right. And you know, I just saw Wal the other day, actually - still working on clean energy and venture capital.

That's right. So, he's CEO and President of Chrysalix, which is really one of the first dedicated venture capital companies focusing on clean energy technologies. And he is an ex-McKinsey-ite, as am I, to my... I don't know, shame or pride or whatever? And so, we came across each other fairly early on in my journey in clean energy. And then he introduced me just as you were headed to Amsterdam.

I forgotten that. Yeah, you're right, it was Wal.

And what we did is, we invited you... At that point, I had just sold what was then New Energy Finance to Bloomberg to create Bloomberg New Energy Finance. And I invited... At that point, I still had superpowers, and I could invite you as an honoured guest, along with your colleague at Greenpeace, Stefan Flothmann. And you came along to what was actually the second Bloomberg New Energy Finance summit - the second ever, we'd done a few as New Energy Finance. And you and Stefan were trying to get your arms around the role of finance from a sort of Greenpeace perspective, as far as I could see?

Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think those were some of the really early days in finance campaigning, which, of course has taken off incredibly over the last decade. We were also really trying to understand where we were at in terms of renewables and the technology we have, and looking at - what is the role of advocacy, especially at an international scale, in trying to help spur the markets for renewables, and decrease incentives for greater fossil fuel expansion? And we learned a lot at that conference.

But what was most of your work at Greenpeace at that point? Most of it was not finance, correct?

Well, in some ways, a lot of it comes down to financial strategies. When I was working to design a campaign to stop oil drilling, for example, Cairn Energy was one of the first oil companies - as the sea ice was receding, and because of climate change - they found new fields, and they wanted to do deep-drilling, just off Greenland. And I helped to design an advocacy campaign to stop that drilling, and we were successful. And in some ways, it was a finance strategy, because what we knew is that, for these unconventional oils, their margins are small. And we were successful in delaying the critical pieces of infrastructure that they needed in order to drill, and they have a very short sea ice window in which they can find oil. So, if you've cost them money and cost them time... They didn't find oil, and in part, it was because Greenpeace all over the world stopped and delayed their infrastructure as it made its way up to Greenland. And then of course, we occupied the drill platform with our Executive Director at the time, Kumi Naidoo, on the drill platform. In some ways, it woke the world up to the need to stop expansion in order to meet climate goals. And it was also one of the first times that we were successful in raising risk and costs so significantly, that that project was cancelled.

So, one of the themes that we're going to explore in this conversation is going to be, what are the kind of leverage points? Because there is a finance community, there's a corporate community, there's a policy community, there's civic society, there are all these different groups... And you said that you'd spent 30 years trying to work out how social change - I forget the exact words you use, but - it's all about how to use activism to foment or to pursue social change? And you've tried most of those different leverage points, haven't you?

Yes, well, I've tried a lot of them. You know, I started out actually as an academic, doing my master's thesis, and thinking about going to law school, and ended up getting embroiled in the logging debates in Canada in the early 90s, the clear-cut logging of old growth rainforest. And in that campaign, that was the first time I did civil disobedience and organized protests and blockades, and that was nerve-racking, as an academic, trying to figure out what this was all about. And then eventually, went from the blockades to boycott and market strategies, as we called them. But in the end, what it's about is building power that's commensurate with the scale of the incumbents; of the companies who want to do the extraction, whether it's old growth logging, or whether it's oil and gas. You have these vested interests, who, you know, they benefit from maintaining the status quo. And even if, like today, we have the science to show that 86% of the emissions trapped in our atmosphere are coming from three products - oil, gas, and coal - and we need absolute emission and production decline, we're still expanding production, emissions are still going up. So, why is that? And what tools can we use? And part of it is about power; it's about the influence of the oil industry, just like it was about the influence of the logging industry back then. So, I've done blockades and boycotts and then entered into the boardrooms and negotiated with CEOs; I've advised governments to design climate policy. And I think, yeah, it's interesting to reflect on that whole 30 years, because I think a lot of it really has been about trying to take distributed power and knowledge and meet the concentrated power of the incumbents. And I think that's what I'm doing today with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.

And we'll get back to that, and we'll talk about your work on the supply side, with the oil and gas companies. But I'm just intrigued by... making sure that... The breadth of what you've done has not just been about occupation, or just about sort of rallying the masses, if you like. One of the other emails that I found as I was trying to work out how many times we had interacted and what we talked about: you approached me in... it was somewhere around, I think, 2015 maybe a bit earlier... I'm not sure, I didn't write down the time. And you had this idea: could you get a lot of companies to agree to buy 100% renewable energy? And I thought, at that point - it was probably before 2015, it was probably more like 2012/13, and I thought that sounds like a really hard thing to do; to go 100% renewable, when the sun doesn't shine at night, and it's not always windy and whatever, and I was like, err, I don't know about that. But was that related to the founding of this thing called RE100? Was that you that kind of planted the seed for that?

Well, I mean, who knows who planted the seed for what, but I certainly, I wouldn't take credit for that. But I think there's this idea - trying to set a North star. Yes, we can go 100%, and if that's our goal, then we deal with things like the cost of battery storage; we deal with things with intermittency; that's the problem you're trying to solve. And part of what we need to do is - especially today, given the climate crisis - is increase ambition, and set those far-reaching targets. And, you know, one of the things we did then - when I was at Greenpeace International - is we decided to look at, where were the fastest growing consumers of power, of electricity, and what are they using right now? And at the time - I don't know if it's true now because I'm not working on electricity right now, but - it was the IT sector. And so, then we looked at some of the big brands - Facebook, Apple, Google - and what were they doing on renewable energy, which at the time was almost nothing. And yet, they're increasing their consumption really fast - you know, the beginning of the big data centres, and they had no procurement policies. And I had worked for years with companies - big companies, Home Depot, Staples, others - to create procurement policies that really shifted the way that paper was produced; what kind of wood was on shelves. And so, we decided to meet with these companies, and eventually campaign against these companies, to get them to create procurement policies, so that when they sight their data centers, new coal plants are not being built. Instead, they're saying to each jurisdiction - and every jurisdiction was competing for these data centres - we want renewable energy. And it worked. We actually ran a really fun campaign against Facebook, on Facebook. And remember, this is back in 2012. And we won the Guinness Book of World Records for the most Facebook comments on a Facebook page - which was on Facebook's page - in 24 hours. And we organized people around the world... And the campaign... tone is important, you know. We knew that at the time, people weren't gonna leave Facebook, you can't boycott Facebook at the time. And the people inside Facebook, they are people - they believe in climate change, they're quite progressive. But meanwhile, new coal plants were being built for them. And so, we ran a campaign: we love Facebook, wish it were green, and all the you know, the posters, the placards and everything around the world were like a heart for Facebook, and then a thumbs down for a coal plant, a thumbs up for a wind farm. And, you know, I guess the rest is history: Facebook did become the first company to create a procurement policy, they started not only, sighting their data centres where they could get renewable feeds, but also starting to build renewable energy, and this started to create a race in the sector, Google, Apple, etc. So, we did help the demand on renewables in that campaign.

And that Unfriend Facebook, and then what proceeded from it, led to those companies now being among the very largest purchasers of renewable energy in the world. So, they're now, pretty much I think all, engaged in trying to not just buy enough renewable energy across a whole year... which would be a lot of renewables, and then a bunch of coal, and then so much renewables, you sell some back to the grid, and some more gas. They're now trying to actually shape - what they call shape - their renewable supply to meet actual demand. Which, of course, is what you really need to do, because otherwise, you're still dependent on fossil for backup, and so on. An interesting stat though, just going back to then... You talked to me about this kind of - I'm going to call it pre-RE100, the 100% renewables - that was actually 2011. But at that time, people were talking about the data centre demand going on to become the most substantial source of electrical demand in the world by 2020, or whatever, which was at that point, nine years in the future. Do you know what happened since then? Demand for electricity from data centres has been absolutely flat - absolutely flat. And the reason is that all of the data centre operators sort of woke up to this problem, and also made all their servers much, much more efficient. And so, they're doing a vast amount more data processing, data handling, communications, but they've actually not increased their energy demand. I've been working with a huge data centre that's being built outside Lisbon - 500 megawatts, but all clean electricity, you'd be happy to hear. Absolutely colossal - I call it a green giant. But the overall demand has not increased from data centres because of efficiency.

That's fantastic. I mean, I think the industry still has a way to go. And at Stand.Earth, which is one of the organizations that I co-founded and still work with, we're doing sector by sector supply chain campaigns, we call them, where we're creating decarbonisation pathways, those far-reaching North Stars, and then ranking all the companies for what they're doing, but including in that their leadership. And I think that's critical, because you started talking about how there’s technology, there's policy, there's finance, and you know, all of these things interact. And what we forget sometimes when we just stare at the numbers is that leadership matters. Because we're social creatures, and people follow leadership. And so, you have this interplay: good policy will change the finance, it will change technology, and technology can lead to new policy. But leadership, when you look throughout history - I spent a couple of years, the last couple of years looking at nuclear non-proliferation, chemical weapons bans, landmines, Montreal Protocol, CFCs - and what I find really interesting is this role of leadership in sparking new ideas, but also in shifting the social norm of what is acceptable on an issue.

So, I don't know if you know, but the subtitle of Cleaning Up is Leadership in an Age of Climate Change.

I didn't - that was not a setup!

We don't emphasize it enough. But when I was thinking about what to do with these conversations... I just know all these extraordinary people, and they've all shown leadership in one way or another; they've all done something, whether they're coming out of advocacy, or coming out of finance, or coming out of entrepreneurship or coming out of government: they've all decided that this is an issue that they're going to work on. And in some cases, at considerable personal risk.

Yeah, and I mean, honestly, that in the work that I've been doing for the last decade, on oil and gas, those who are at the forefront of both the impacts of the fossil fuel industry, but also challenging the continued expansion of the fossil fuel industry in the climate era, that's where I've seen incredible leadership. And talk about the risk... I mean, I'm talking about indigenous leaders from the Amazon to northern Canada, especially in British Columbia, where we're seeing a lot of new fracking, or Alberta, in the oil sands. But also, frontline communities in the US, where these are people who see the impacts absolutely every day; they're living in communities that are benefiting from the industry. And they are standing up and pushing the boundaries about the need for the shift. Often with conflicts in their own families, and often at great personal risk. And I find that leadership really inspiring and as I kind of work in - now, international diplomacy and meeting with CEOs, meeting with Prime Ministers... I carry that with me, that we need to recognize and find a way to listen to that leadership, and what's happening on the ground in the frontlines, and bring it into the halls of power.

Not to mention in Latin America. I mean, there's scores of activists that have been essentially targeted assassinations, because they have stood in the way of this sort of development.

Yeah, that's right. I had I had a little tiny taste of that in my work in Alberta. Certainly, I mean, I'm privileged, I come from a wealthy country, I'm white... but when I started speaking out against the expansion of the oil industry in Alberta, I was attacked, vilified by all sides, and huge campaigns, and then the death threats started. And I'm relatively safe, I'm not saying I faced what people are facing in countries in Africa or Latin America, certainly not... But it was scary. And there was a moment there where it gave me pause; I like to think that I'm fairly courageous, but I'm not stupid. I actually only ended up working in Alberta during that period where I was advising government and trying to design climate policy, in Alberta, for about two years. And I left, in part, because it wasn't safe for me.

Let's come back to that, because at the moment, you're still in Amsterdam... You then, I think you did about six years, you were in Amsterdam? What brought you back?

I was only in Amsterdam for two years, actually - that round.

Okay, but how long were you with Greenpeace?

I've been with Greenpeace several times. But in that instance, I was only there for two years, in the role of co-director of the International Program, in large part because, there I was helping to design campaigns in Greenland and China, and, you know, international IT campaigns etc., and I just couldn't stop thinking about Canada. Because, I don't know if you remember, but, it was around 2011 / 2012, when Prime Minister Harper did that big speech in the UK, calling for Canada to be an energy superpower; he was going to triple the size of the oil sands. And I, having been to UNFCCC, you know, the COPs in Copenhagen, and sat with the scientists and read the IPCC reports, it was so horrifying to me that... You know, even he during Copenhagen, stood on the stage and said, climate change is the moral challenge of our age, there's nothing more important - and then he goes home and says he's going to triple the size of the oil sands. And I just, I felt like I needed to go home. So, I moved back to Canada, I think it was 2012, and I spent six years working on oil sands and pipelines.

Okay. So, the various times that you've been at Greenpeace, I was trying to get that straight in my head, how many years. But you went back to Canada, and became very closely associated with the pipeline... I don't know what to call them, the pipeline conflicts? And for those amongst the audience who are not familiar with the politics, and the way it works, is Alberta is essentially landlocked in the middle of Canada, and has got lots of oil and gas - much more oil and gas than it could use locally. But to get it anywhere useful, you need pipelines, and so that sort of sets up the conflict. Is that a fair description of the background to these campaigns?

Yeah, I mean, in part, yes, and that's why they were so successful, and so controversial. Because in order for the oil sands to expand, they needed a strategy of how to get the oil out, and they couldn't get the oil out... You know, there's some oil trains, but really they needed new pipelines in order to expand. So initially, they proposed the Keystone pipeline, and then when that got bogged down, they proposed the Northern Gateway pipeline, Energy East, Trans Mountain. And at some point, there was this spider web of proposals heading out from the heart of Canada, Alberta, down through the US and to the coasts, both coasts, and attempts by the industry to expand. And so certainly those of us in the ins who work on climate change, that was one of our strategies was, well, look, if this infrastructure is slowed down, if it's stopped, they can't expand that carbon bomb, that pool of carbon. We talked a lot about how the pipelines were the fuse to one of the largest carbon bombs on the planet. But then as I started working on the pipelines and meeting people in the communities who were opposing them - who were doing lawsuits and hearings and regulatory hearings - what I realized is it was actually a perfect storm, representative of the impacts of the fossil fuel industry. I met indigenous leaders who were opposing pipelines because of treaty rights, of their right to be a part of decisions, because of their concern especially over water; some of these pipelines would pass through 3000 streams, like the Trans Mountain, or have to be blasted through whole mountains and whole communities. But then, in Nebraska, I met farmers who got involved in trying to stop the pipelines because of again, rights issues, eminent domain; what do you mean you can just go across my cattle ranch? And then there were people who were worried about oil spills; and then there were marine scientists who were worried about the impacts of the increased tankers on the whales and on the ocean environment; and then human rights activists who are concerned, and living the impact of the fossil fuel industry every day. Because there's the climate impacts, but then let's not forget that fossil fuels are the greatest cause of premature death on this planet. One in five people who die in this planet die just from the air pollution of fossil fuels alone. And then you also have the rare cancers that show up in refining communities or downstream in the Athabasca tar sands. So, in some ways those pipeline campaigns were the beginning of a new climate movement, that was scientists and health activists and indigenous rights activists and local community activists, and in my opinion, that's when we really started to build power.

My first experience, my first awakening to some of these issues, was when I was Deputy Managing Director of a television news agency, Associated Press Television, at the time that Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed in Nigeria. And you know, Shell had - I don't know what the word is, presided over - there'd been this incredible pollution of the Ogoni Delta, and this local activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, had been essentially declared a traitor and was then hanged. And I was running a news agency, and I knew energy from a kind of thermodynamics and physics perspective; but that was my awakening to some of the kind of long tentacles of the issues which you've laid out. But there's also very local politics in Alberta. And I went over - I've also spoken at conferences in Alberta - and what Albertans, a lot of Albertans, say is, look, there is demand for oil, we've got the oil, if we don't produce it - and we're Canadian, we can do it ethically, we don't kill and shoot activists - we can do it ethically, we can do it clean. And by the way, we're Alberta; we're paying the taxes for all of the rest of Canada, all these people who hang out and in Quebec and Toronto and Vancouver and drink their lattes and tell us we're evil, they're very happy to be funded by our Canadian tax dollars.

That's a good summary. And, you know, what I started realizing when I started working internationally is that you hear those same arguments in every country; whether you're in the Permian Basin in Texas, whether you're in Norway, whether you're in the UK, Argentina, with the expansion of LNG at Vaca Muerta.... Every country, every company, wants to be the last barrel sold. They're not denying climate change anymore; they're saying yes, yes, the world will use less oil, but it's going to be ours. And that is essentially one of the huge problems that we have; that's why we're on track to produce 110% more oil, gas and coal that can ever be burned and meet our targets under the Paris Agreement - stay below 1.5. In fact, we already have enough oil, gas and coal on the surface of the planet or under construction, if we burned it, to take us past two degrees. So, as a society, we're spending billions to dig up stuff that we actually know that we can't use, because if we burn it, it will burn us. And we're using our time... it's not just finance, it's our political capital, it's our leadership, to focus energy on producing more of this stuff now. And that's because no one is regulating the production; we don't have yet negotiation on who gets to produce and how much. As you know, that's decided by the marketplace, it's decided by price, or it's decided by OPEC. And that experience in Alberta made me realize that I understood; I think when I started this work, there were good guys and bad guys, and I knew what side I was on. And working in Alberta, I really liked a lot of the people I was working with in industry and in local communities - they're good people, and they're stuck in bad systems. And they want fairness; they feel like well, if other people do it, we should be able to do it too. And you can kind of understand those arguments. Except when we add it up, it puts us on a trajectory for disaster.

So, I did an episode with Dr. Nawal al-Hosany, whom I've known for many years; she's from Abu Dhabi, and is now the Special Representative to IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency. And I talked to her about the fact that Abu Dhabi has the COP presidency, and in fact, the president of the national oil company Sultan Al-Jaber is going to be the president of the COP. So, we talked about this, and she said, look, the day we pump our last barrel of oil will be a day of celebration - it's a fantastic perspective. The problem is that meanwhile, Abu Dhabi is also continuing, just like the Albertan oil companies would like to do, to invest.

Well, exactly. And that gets to the core point. And it's interesting that you should mention the Ken Saro-Wiwa campaign, because I was introduced to his son and to that campaign through a colleague of mine, a brilliant man who you may know, Steve Kretzmann, who founded Oil Change International. And that was, whatever, 20 years ago, and I had a conversation with him recently about this question of demand and supply. Climate policy and agreements have been built for years on this idea that we reduce demand, try and increase the price of carbon, renewables get cheaper, and that will constrain supply. And we know it's not working. It's certainly not working fast enough to keep us safe. And so, why not? And again, if you look at all those other treaties and all those other intransigent issues - CFCs, nuclear non-proliferation, chemical weapons bans - we needed to constrain both supply and demand. And economists would say, if you have to cut with both sides of the scissors. And Steve said to me the other day, look at the history of transitions; the last great energy shift, petroleum to replace whale oil. Petroleum did replace whale oil in many uses, or even most; but the whaling industry created new markets for their products. And in fact, they expanded production. So, between 1700 and 1800, there was like, I think he said, 300,000 barrels of whale oil. In the next 100 years, 3 million. And so, the discovery of petroleum actually spurred a dramatic increase in whaling. And so, why is this important? I think it's important because previous energy transitions show us that transition hasn't historically resulted in reduced production from the incumbent source. And I think that's important because whale oil to petroleum, like wood to coal, is better understood as an energy addition. So, this is exactly what the oil and gas industry is doing right now - with hydrogen, with petrochemicals. And so, what actually did constrain whaling and whale oil? Again, there was that huge leap when we discovered petroleum, in part because diesel ships can go faster and catch more whales and bigger whales. But what constrained it, what saved the whales, was changes in government policy made possible by international diplomacy and activism. And I think we have to look at that, because right now, everybody wants to have their cake and eat it too. So, while we're seeing this, that remarkable - that you always talk about - drop in prices and renewables, the incredible uptake that is far faster than anyone thought, we're still seeing increased emissions and increased production. And if we increase production, and fossil fuel infrastructure, what we produce today is what we're gonna use tomorrow.

So, look, there's a lot to unpack there. You've got a wood to coal, you've got whale oil to oil, and then you've got renewables and so on, and I'm not sure that I would agree with all of the premises there. But I don't know if I want to... I'm not sure if we want to go too far into the history of whaling. Because also it became an economic to chase fewer and fewer whales on longer and longer distances, as well. But I want to actually come back to... So, you've laid out your thesis, which is we've got to work on the supply side. And 2016, I think it was the telephone goes, and it's Rachel Notley, who's been elected Premier of Alberta, where all this is happening. And she asks you to co-chair what?

The Oil Sands Advisory Working Group. So, it was set up to help design policy, implementation of policy, in Alberta for the climate plan, and to create consensus between industry, environmentalists, local community leaders, First Nations and labour, on how we were going to implement a carbon price in Alberta, and also an emissions cap. It was the first climate policy ever, and it was a historic moment, right? Rachel Notley's government was the first change in government in Alberta in 44 years. But even before Rachel Notley was elected, I started hosting, with Dave Collier, the former CEO of [inaudible] and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, these roundtable dinners with the CEOs of the largest oil companies and scientists and environmentalists, in part because I wanted to understand what they were thinking when they saw the science; I wanted to understand all those arguments, how they could continue to increase production in the climate era; and also see if we could reach some agreement on policy so the government wasn't so held hostage - climate policy hadn't had any breakthroughs in Canada for over a decade at this point. And so, I co-chaired that panel with Dave Collier, and Melody Lapine from the Mikisew Cree, and we spent two years having these conversations, trying to reach agreement on the carbon tax and, and also the emissions cap in the oil sands. And the amazing thing is we were able to reach agreement on some really strong policy, and I think in part because those five large oil companies saw the writing on the wall; they knew they were going to have to move forward, they needed a better reputation for Canadian oil, they were hurting from the campaigns and, Canadian oil is high carbon. But so, we reached an agreement, we got a climate plan, there was the onstage moment - the oil companies, with the environmentalists, and the First Nations, and Rachel Notley, first climate plan in the history of Alberta. And it wasn't two weeks later: the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers launched a campaign against the carbon tax, and against the emissions cap. So, these same companies who had reached a deal and stood on the stage and got their massive press around the world about how forward-thinking Alberta is, and they've turned a corner, and it's going to be the most ethical oil in the world... And then they started campaigning behind our backs against the carbon tax and funneling money into the opposition, Jason Kenney, who is a climate denier, and they were successful. So, the next Premier of Alberta was Jason Kenney, who, at his first press conference, stood beside a guy wearing a shirt that said, "I love oil", and held up a picture of my face with a target on it, and announced that he was taking Alberta back, he was removing all the climate legislation, he was going to fight the carbon tax, and fight people like this who are trying to destroy our province. And that was, for me, the moment when I realized really just how naive I had been, because there were good people from the industry at that table, but they couldn't maintain support for the policies. And this is something we now know from the excellent work of InfluenceMap and others, that is happening all over the world every day. This is a very powerful lobby that is weakening climate policy, both nationally and internationally.

So, and then Jason Kenney dug up a whole load of things that you'd said; you had called the oil sands, you'd compared it to Mordor, the land of waste from Lord of the Rings, and you'd said a whole bunch of things that you had to sort of row back from in order to take part in that exercise, correct?

Yes. I mean, if you've ever been to the Alberta tar sands, you can understand why I said that: it is the single largest industrial project on Earth; for the last two decades, the industry has been mowing down forests, and literally digging up the earth. I mean, a lot of people don't realize that the reason that that oil is so high carbon is that it's mixed in with the sand. And so, the devastation in Alberta - the tailings ponds alone now hold a trillion litres of toxic water; you can see them from space. This is a massive industrial exercise, and it's a horrifying, horrifying landscape. But yes, he attacked me, because he realized that I was his opponent's Achilles' heel; Rachel Notley had appointed me. The funny thing is, she appointed me at the request of the oil CEOs, but he never talks about that. But she had appointed me to this panel, and I was, in his mind an eco-terrorist, and so now there was a fox in the henhouse. And so, he ran a campaign FireBerman.ca, with billboards of my face all across Alberta. That was when the death threats started.

On Rachel Notley duly did FireBerman.ca

Well, she didn't - I stepped down, actually. She decided that in order to get elected, she was going to have to take a more moderate approach to the energy transition, and that she needed to separate herself from me. So, she started attacking me as well. So, there was one election where I was like, the political football between the right and the left - everybody hated me. And I was asked to do a keynote speech on the future of Canada - energy in Canada and climate change - at the Alberta Teachers' Association. And it became so controversial that I was going to do this speech in Alberta that the Premier called up the Alberta teachers and insisted that she have equal time. So, it all culminated in this big face-off between the Premier doing a speech and me doing a speech. And I'm quite proud of that speech, I spent a long time working on it. But you know, I did that thing that progressives and the left kind of falls into, where we're really... we're really earnestly using the facts and trying to convince people. And that was airtight that speech. I had a frame; you know, we're better than this, we can do this together, Canada. And I don't remember her whole speech, but I remember her concluding line. And she said, "unlike Tzeporah, here in Alberta, we ride horses, not unicorns." And that was the line that went across the country, everywhere. And, you know, hats off, it was impressive. But yeah, it was a fun couple of years.

You clapped back, though, with, "you don't buy more cigarettes to quit smoking", but that one didn't go around the world in quite the same way, did it?

No, no, it didn't. But I think that's right. And it's not just Alberta, right? We're seeing that all over the place. We're seeing Biden approving Willow. In the UK, new projects and proposals constantly; it's Rosneff, it's Cambo. And our elected officials right now, and the companies, want us to believe that they can continue expanding production and still achieve net zero. And as you know, that report came out the other day saying, analysis of the major oil companies' net zero plans show that they're a joke. And it's not that it isn't possible to do carbon storage; we both know it is, or direct air capture, etc. But it's not competitive at scale. And the amount that they are factoring in, in order to justify increasing production, is absolutely absurd - and it's not happening. We need an absolute emissions and production decline. And then we also need all of these technologies to get us back to 350 parts per million. And where are we today, 421 parts per million? And we're seeing the impacts. My country right now is on fire. From coast to coast to coast. Thousands of people have been evacuated; tens of thousands of square kilometres destroyed - in fact, millions this year alone. And we're seeing that all over the world. We just... we can't have our cake and eat it too. But the good news is we don't need to, as you know; we have the technology to make the changes we need. But we just are faced with this incredibly powerful political lobby. And we need to shift that, and we need to stop pretending we can negotiate with these companies and start regulating them.

Okay, so now we see... That's sort of the end of naive Tzeporah, who tries to play nice and be earnest and progressive and so on. And is it around then - I think it's 2019 - that you were awarded this kind of prize - it's $2 million dollars - because you're gonna like change the world, and you've got a track record. But you're back at Stand.Earth at this point. Who gave you that award, what was that?

It's the Climate Breakthrough Award. They give it every year to a number of people around the world, who they think have a track record in creating bold out of the box thinking and strategies. And it's to encourage us to try something new; try something that people wouldn't fund; try something that is a risk. And when I got that award, I had been very inspired by conversations with a number of my colleagues - Mark Campanale, from Carbon Tracker, Richard Denniss, from The Australia Institute, the academics in the UK Peter Newell and Andrew Simms - looking at this idea of, what do we need to complement the Paris agreement, to actually constrain fossil fuel production in line with demand? It's not about whether it's supply or demand, it's about both. And we had - I and others - had been doing research looking at the Paris Agreement, trying to understand, what are the mechanisms that can help align production? And you know, the Paris Agreement does not even include the words oil, gas, coal or fossil fuels. And in order to regulate this industry to reduce production, as quickly as we need to, in order to meet the climate agreements, a lot of us started believing that we need another - we need more international cooperation, we need more global governance - and exploring this idea of building a treaty similar to nuclear non- proliferation, where countries start to manage the decline of fossil fuels, in cooperation with each other, and equity and fairness are taken into account, which it's not in the marketplace right now, when you're deciding who gets to produce what and how much. And so, I took the money and I felt like George Clooney in Ocean's Eleven. I was like, who are the smartest people I know in the world? Okay, I'm gonna need a lawyer, I need a diplomat, I need a researcher. And I just started building a team. And now - when is this three years later, almost four years later - we have a global Secretariat for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, who is helping to coordinate both diplomacy and research and communications around the world. We have a directed network campaign that's supported by 3000 civil society NGOs around the world, it's active now in 40 or so countries. 80 cities have passed motions. And then again, this was following nuclear non-proliferation - I'm old enough to remember signs, "nuclear-free cities", you know, when you enter the city. And so, we have 80 cities now, we have 101 Nobel laureates, 3000 scientists have joined the initiatives, and now we have the support from six countries. And those countries are starting to hold bilateral and multilateral conversations about, what are the barriers to constraining fossil fuel production and how do we do this?

But if I was to make the case that maybe naive Tzeporah hasn't quite left the building... Those are all players who frankly, don't produce oil. I mean, your countries... I looked on the website, I think they're seven now: Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Niue, and Timor Leste. And, you know, this is not... it's not like you've got Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Russia, Tajikistan, China - you haven't got anybody meaningful. You've got a whole bunch of progressives and countries that are on the suffering side of climate change, but not the production side.

That's true. And again, look at the history: nuclear non-proliferation and the TPMW as well, the other treaty on nuclear weapons, what you had first was a group of countries, first movers who start to create the conversation. And even in the end, you didn't have the big nuclear powers signing up to the treaty, you still don't. But the fact is, the journey matters towards the treaty. The shift... nuclear weapons went from being what protects us, we stockpile them to protect us, to being weapons of mass destruction - stockpiling them threatens us. And that social norm has been sticky, and it has become an issue in foreign policy debate. So, even though you didn't have Russia and the US signing, they're not stockpiling. And you see that, historically, in a number of other places, we started building support for the treaty in the South Pacific on purpose, because those are the countries that had been leading the conversation on climate internationally. We wouldn't have a 1.5-degree target without those countries. We wouldn't have, now, the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, recognizing climate change. We wouldn't even have the conversations on loss and damage. And the countries that are most vulnerable are the ones who have been leading some of the diplomacy and discussions on climate change. So. this group of countries will grow. And I believe that we will get some producers into the group of countries. And the discussions that they're having now are changing the conversation. You know, maybe it will end up in other bilateral or multilateral agreements on, for example, debt. There are a number of countries right now, like Ecuador, drilling for oil in the heart of the Amazon, just to feed their debt. There are a number of barriers to constraining the production and use of fossil fuels that need to be identified, and that need greater international cooperation to solve them. Because if not, every country is going to keep trying to be the last barrel sold. And if that happens, then we're all in trouble. So yes, it's going to be hard to get a treaty. But there have been other treaties that, from the point that you got your first countries proposing the negotiations in the UN, it was only two or three years till you started seeing [inaudible], and started seeing a shift in behaviour. That was true of chemical weapons; that was true of landmines. So, you know, it's not easy. But I think at this moment in history, we need to be bold, and we need some new ideas, because what we're collectively doing is not working.

So, interestingly, those island nations have appeared, they've made an appearance before on Cleaning Up, in an episode with another great, strong, Canadian woman climate leader, Catherine McKenna, who told the story about how during the actual Paris negotiations, she was very new in-role, and she ended up meeting with them, and then that became the High Ambition Alliance, which she joined without much premeditation, and that became an important player to get the Paris agreement across the line. And by the way, she was also another Canadian woman climate leader who was vilified and attacked horribly, and I saw that in my interactions with her online; I hope that didn't contribute to her leaving politics, but it may well have. But I want to fast forward - we'll put a link to things like that in the show notes, the conversation with Catherine, and all the other episodes, because I think some of the listeners may want to kind of join some dots here - but I want to fast forward. Supposing you're successful, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty gains in momentum, and it starts to ratchet down the ability of countries to increase supply.... There's another criticism of it, which is that right now, the people who are poorest and most vulnerable in the world are the ones that actually use... any increase in energy prices is regressive, because the people it hurts are the poor and vulnerable. And so, when, nice, comfortable, progressives say, "we must have a carbon price, and we must ratchet down supply; it'll be fine, because the price will go up, and eventually there'll be a price signal and innovation, and it'll all be okay." But in that arc - between then and when the price of clean alternatives comes down - the people who suffer are the poor and the vulnerable. It's a point made by Jason Kenney, it's a point made by plenty of people in bad faith and in good faith. It's really true, though, is it not? That pushing up the price of fossil fuels, starting to price in these externalities, harms the poorest and most vulnerable?

The price rise does not happen in a vacuum. And we're not calling for supply constraints that are not in line and in lockstep with demand constraints. What the Fossil Fuel Treaty is designed to do, is to help ensure a managed decline. Because we're going to have a managed decline, and we're going to have an unmanaged decline. We know that. And the fact is, we have all been - especially the poor and vulnerable - subject to the boom and bust of price shocks from the fossil fuel industry for a very long time. And the fossil fuel industry had the last 50 years to provide energy to the world's most vulnerable, and it didn't. It created fossil fuel projects, like we were talking about in Nigeria, for export and for profit. This is an industry that has been making absolutely obscene profits - literally billions a day - on the backs of both our environment and the world's most vulnerable. And let's be clear: billions of people still don't have access to energy, and it's not like the fossil fuel industry didn't have a chance to do that.

Tzeporah, they would argue that billions have been brought out of poverty and fed, and crops have been fertilized. And all the billions of profits... It's very easy to poke at them, but those companies are owned by... They are also providing your pension, my pension. And even if it's in totalitarian countries where... national oil companies and gas companies, they are providing for the wealth of those countries. Is it really productive to just demonize them?

And more people are dying every day because of the products, which they knew would happen, than anything else on Earth. They are the greatest cause of climate change, and poisoning our air and water, and when they leave a region consistently around the world, they leave taxpayers with the cleanup bills, which is in the billions. So, look, we have, I agree with you, we have all benefited from the fossil fuel era, absolutely. But now they are standing in the way of a transition being fast enough to keep the majority of the world safe. And that's the bottom line. And that's why... people in vulnerable nations, vulnerable countries, are at the forefront of calling for an end to expansion of fossil fuels: the Don't Gas Africa campaign in Africa, the Don't Gas Asia campaign in Asia. The first groups around the world - health women, faith groups - to join the Fossil Fuel Treaty and the first countries, coming from vulnerable nations, because we do need equity and fairness, and they also recognize that it is the greatest threat to them. So, you're right, we can't constrain supply without also building the infrastructure that we need. But politically, that is what's standing in our way, is that we're not... Canada just put 20 billion, another 10 billion the other day, into an oil sands pipeline; bought it, because the industry and investors pulled out, because they could see the writing on the wall with EVs and demand... So, the national government, the Trudeau Government, bought the pipeline and sunk $30 billion into it. What could that $30 billion have built in terms of electricity, infrastructure, energy efficiency programs, heat pumps, etc.? And so, we need to make that shift, we need to do both at the same time.

I must say that purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline by the Trudeau Government was, in my mind, truly mystifying. I would love to have somebody on Cleaning Up who could try to explain it. But I think you made a point about... I'm pushing and provoking, but the point you made about the lockstep between demand reduction and supply reduction, I completely agree. And I think that that's the critical... Because if you push down demand too fast, supply will find a way. But equally, if you push down supply too fast, you are harming the poor and vulnerable. But what I would then ask is, why is that your job? Because the IEA... When I started New Energy Finance, the IEA was quite clearly an oil buyers' club, to counter... its heritage is countering the influence of OPEC. But you know, the last 10 years, the IEA, under Fatih Birol's leadership - and I'm going to have him on Cleaning Up for the second time shortly - they, I'm pretty sure, would see themselves as being in the business of engineering an orderly decline. I mean, Fatih Birol 100% accepts climate change and the urgency of action. So, he's not trying to maintain the volume of fossil fuels being consumed at all... And in a sense, he's managing that orderly decline, is he not? Or would you say he's not?

Well, first of all, I would say it is... I'm sorry, but it's not his job. At this moment in history - when the public good depends on us reducing absolute production and emissions of fossil fuels - we need accountability, we need transparency, and we need our governments to protect the public good, and to manage that. The IEA has a role to play. But let's also be clear that you and I both know, over the last several decades, they've been wrong, consistently. And they're not... in Canada, we'd say they're not skating to where the puck's going, they're skating to where the puck is. And we've seen that consistently with their projections on renewables, on uptake, on price. And so, yes, they have a role to play, and information is absolutely critical. But I think we wouldn't even have the IEA's Net Zero Scenarios, which... I don't think it's too much to ask to try and do planning on a largely habitable planet. We know what the IPCC says, we know that we need to, that every tonne of carbon right now is going to save lives. And we know where we should be heading - and they haven't shown leadership. They were pushed to do net-zero.

Well, you say that... Fatih Birol has said that for net-zero, for the net-zero transition scenario, you do not need the development of new oil and gas fields. He's very careful about what he says; he doesn't say no new investment, no maintenance. Isn't that exactly what you're saying? Why are you not working in lockstep with the IEA? Because aren't you on the same agenda?

Well, no, no sure. Lots of people in our community and who work on the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty are working with the IEA, it's not to say that we're not. But the science said exactly what he said in 2014, with Paul Ekins' paper, and others. And civil society has been saying that for decades - that's what the whole keep it in the ground movement was. So, I'm glad Faith Birol is now saying that, this year. And I think we have lost a decade, and now we're paying for it. And so, they do have a role to play. But when we started looking at production, we realized that their data was not going to be enough. With nuclear non-proliferation, you needed a baseline for countries to negotiate. And that's why Carbon Tracker and others created the global registry of fossil fuel production and reserves. Because the IEA doesn't publish records of projects or embedded co2. Now, there is an open and transparent database that you don't have to buy [inaudible] to get, that shows you exactly who's producing what and how much and how much co2 it represents. And that's important, because people talk a lot about, we have to get China on board, we have to get India on board in the climate fight, that's all true. But 70% to 80% of the planned expansion - expansion - globally on the planet of oil and gas in the next five years, is in the US and Canada. These are wealthy countries, and that information is critical for a foreign policy debate.

Tzeporah, I'm just aware that we are running out of time. It's been extraordinary talking to you, because you and I met pretty much a decade ago, and what I'm learning from this conversation is that you are essentially always a decade ahead of the rest of the world in these matters. So, perhaps we should... off-line, perhaps we should have a conversation about what are your thoughts now about what 2033 will bring, and should bring, and needs to bring, and I'm sure that'd be a pretty fascinating conversation as well. It was a great pleasure talking to you.

Thank you so much. It's always great to talk to you, Michael.

All the best. You have a good day.

Canada's Controversial Queen of Green - Ep131: Tzeporah Berman

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