David Austin: In his recent book, Climate Change and Natural Disasters, Vinod Thomas, Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy writes about “The knowledge - action gap,” when it comes to solving the climate crisis.
And he should know.
In his career, Professor Thomas has been at the forefront of evaluating and making policy recommendations for green growth and action on climate change at institutions like the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank Group.
I asked him to explain what does he mean by the knowledge - action gap, and what are some of the causes?
Vinod Thomas: On the one side, few topics have had so much research and analysis done despite the complexity of the topic as climate change. And the scientists' verdict on the trends and what could happen if the current trends continue, are just frightening.
At the same time, action in terms of policies and just people's mindsets couldn't be more distinct from that knowledge side.
And this is not the case in many, many other problems. For example, pandemics, Asian flu and so on. The WHO and national governments quickly connect the knowledge that you have to a series of emergency actions and long-term solutions.
This has not been the case in the case of climate change. Even as the degree of warming has just gone up year after year. And even as people personally feel the heat – Singapore was 35, 36 degrees at points of time, which used to be 27 degrees Celsius in the 60s.
Similarly, the California fires are hitting people's homes in a way that could be an illustration of the climate crisis. And yet, carbon emissions, which is a root cause of climate change, continue to go up.
David Austin: How much do you attribute climate change denial to the problem?
Vinod Thomas: Yes, indeed, especially on a subject like this, where the connection between what you do and what results you get are intangible, the opposition to the climate reality from the vested interests, particularly the oil lobby, muddies the water and adds to the greater intangibility of that connection.
Like in the case of smoking, for decades doctors were clear on the one to one link between smoking and ill health. The same is the case for climate. But during those years, in the case of smoking, the minority, the lobbyists were successful, in one suppressing the information, and two, providing a counter-argument that this might not be the case.
The very same has happened in 1988. Jim Hanson of NASA had a congressional hearing in which he had predicted exactly what was going to happen with climate, and 30 years later we are beginning to wake up to that.
David Austin: Can you talk about how the pursuit of economic growth has contributed to climate change and how you believe we can change that model?
Vinod Thomas: There is no doubt that the combination of increase in the numbers of people on the planet and the rightful concern for reducing poverty through economic growth has combined to produce an economic growth model that could not easily decouple from the climate trends that it would produce. A few countries have tried to decouple them, namely increased growth or keep growth where it is, while reducing the carbon footprint. Germany may be an example of that. Again, there are complexities there.
But by and large, as countries have grown, particularly in Asia - be it China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia - as growth has taken place poverty has come down. That is a good news in a big way. But at the same time, the carbon intensity of that growth, that is how much is your footprint as you grow, has barely come down. And it has actually gone up in some instances, and the total amount of carbon has gone up exponentially.
And so today we are looking at the highest parts per million in carbon, 415 in the atmosphere. Associated with that, we're also seeing the five hottest years in recorded history.
David Austin: Speaking about the economy, I've finally heard that the economic term for it, which I was always curious about, is "externalities" and that companies were able to keep these costs off their books. So yes, you could say, “Oh, it's been very profitable, but, in a way, they're just racking up a debt, like, a climate debt that's going to have to be paid.” Is that a good way to look at it?
Vinod Thomas: It is the right way to look at it. In the following sense, externalities, they come in two forms. There's positive, and there is negative. An example of the positive would be vaccination. You take a prevention against an illness, you are okay, you're better off, and so will be your neighbours. And so that is a spillover on the good side of the ledger.
On the bad side of the ledger, you don't stop at a red light, you hurt yourself, but you hurt the other cars, as well.
So the negative externalities in this case, come quintessentially from coal plants, energy, from coal spewing carbon into the air. And that hurts people in the neighbourhood, but also hurts people around the world.
Indonesia burning the forest for slash and burn agriculture hurts the children in the schools in Indonesia. But they also hurt children and elderly, and just about everybody in neighbouring Malaysia and neighbouring Singapore.
These are criminal examples of negative externalities. And in the case of climate change, it's a bit more intangible. It is more accumulated over time, but the phenomenon is the same.
That one doesn't, the business doesn't, internalise the externality in the sense of having to pay for the damage you're causing. If the payment were adequate, the externality would go away.
Along those lines, Singapore has a $5 a ton carbon emission charge. Obviously, that's very low, but nevertheless, if everyone could do that and raise the tax, we would have an answer. Would that be in time? That is a big question.
David Austin: And right now that is just on a country by country basis, right? So Singapore has done it. Other countries have levelled carbon taxes, but there's no universal regulator that can play this role. Is that right?
Vinod Thomas: That is correct. And that is a very crucial point because we would have liked to think that, let each country do this on its own and perhaps we'll get a good outcome. But in this case, the fundamental problem is that the air is free and it has no price. And the only way you could mimic a price for air is to say globally that a country shall not emit more than such and such. And so there is a uniform action across countries and that is what the Paris Agreement tried to do.
Singapore is part of that and meeting those targets. Even those targets are very conservative. Nevertheless, if those targets could have been raised for everybody and everybody would adhere to that, including the United States, that could have begun to hit the solution.
David Austin: I know you've also written about how addressing climate change can be a win-win for the economy. Tell me more about that, about how you see potential win-win situations for the economy, addressing climate change.
Vinod Thomas: On the one side, if countries did not act on climate and bore the damages that result from continued use of coal or not having defences of sea lines, the damages would more than offset any costs you have incurred in climate investments. So in a very simple arithmetic sense, the benefits of climate action far outweigh the cost of inaction. So that's one thing.
But that said, one should not assume that a transition from a high carbon intensive growth path where energy comes predominantly from fossil fuels – 95, 96% of Singapore is still fossil fuels, so is Southeast Asia, Indonesia, for example – to a renewable content of that energy, which often is called a silver bullet. If you could go 100% renewable, that would begin to address the problem.
But that transition is not costless. Even though cost per unit of energy today, there is almost a parity between fossils and renewables, there are many other costs. So this is why climate action is associated with investments.
Singapore has announced a hundred billion, investment for climate action. And this includes in mitigation and adaptation. There's a distinction between the two, but nevertheless, there is a commitment to do something about it over the next 50 to a hundred years. Involving that type of investment that takes money away from many other programmes.
So one should not assume that these are costless things, but as you incur the cost, one must think of it as an investment to avoid damages in the future. So in that sense, that avoidance more than offsets the hundred billion that would go in. And in that sense, it's a win-win.
David Austin: Saying that the switch from fossil fuels to renewables is not costless and you've given kind of the example of like the opportunity costs, that's just money that you're not spending on some other programme. Are there any other costs that may not be apparent to the normal person? What other kinds of costs are you talking about?
Vinod Thomas: Lifestyle changes that are intangible costs. Just as in the direction of renewables, one can also imagine reducing the amount of non-vegetarian food you have or automobiles you drive instead of walking to work, and the comfort that is associated with that in the eyes of many could be discomfort in the eyes of others. So even though in the aggregate we could think of all of this as win, win, win. Win for the economy, win for the environment, win for the individual. Surely, there is a perception in people's mindset that, so in, for the economy and for the environment and a loss for me.
And that is a rub.
The whole thing comes down to people's mindsets. We can talk about carbon taxes that will internalise the externality. We can talk about having a price or a regulation of carbon that establishes a price for air for everybody. We can talk about forceful actions that would switch economies from fossil fuels to renewables, but at the end of the day, the coverage of these actions, and the intensity of these actions depend on people's voting on those issues, whether it's [in] the United States or whether it's [in] Singapore, it's the same . If people's mindsets had changed and they would clamour for a change in the way we run our economies, that would be the most basic, but also the most far-reaching solution to the climate crisis.
David Austin: There seems to be growing awareness for example, you mentioned vegetarianism or less animal proteins. Do you have any research, towards people's attitudes changing?
Vinod Thomas: Yes, indeed. People's views are changing by the surveys that have been done about their preferences. But you also have surveys that suggest that these changes are not fast enough.
People's mindsets are not there yet. So in that sense, there are changes taking place. Companies are talking about triple bottom lines. And there are many progressive companies that really are insisting that they will do renewables. DBS [Bank] for example, is not going to lend for, fossil fuel, coal based activities.
But this is unfortunately, in a perspective of the larger arithmetic, it's still “boutique examples”. They are very nice. We certainly feel good about them. It's like walking into a nice boutique, but the aggregate is going the wrong way.
And that is back to the big puzzle, the knowledge - action disconnect. Even as the evidence is mounting, the aggregate emissions of carbon are rising not falling in the United States, in China, in India, in Russia.
So we want to celebrate the boutique examples, but we have to be thinking of scaling them up quickly and massively.
David Austin: So what should we be doing? Should we be running around like our hair's on fire? Should we be striking for climate change? Like students like Greta Thunberg? Does it require that kind of urgent and vocal and spectacular action? Is that what you recommend?
Vinod Thomas: Actually, I would recommend a twofold approach. I think crisis is the moment when people have acted in many instances. For example, the Minamata mercury poisoning in Japan, in the 50s, gave rise to the environmental movement. The Ohio river in the United States caught fire. And that led to the forceful action and the creation of the EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) and so on.
So crisis, is often a trigger for action. And so one wants to add to the sense of urgency and not play that down. At the same time for the reason that I had mentioned earlier that a sense of desperation can also lead people to give up.
So while the crisis is accentuated, in terms of presentations to the public, they need to be coupled with examples of actions that seem to work. For instance, the parity that renewables are now, hitting with, fossil fuels and therefore that switching from A to B is not a distant dream, but it can happen within five years.
Those sort of examples need to be celebrated together with stressing the nature of the crisis, if not catastrophe.
David Austin: Okay. Well then on that, let's talk a bit about some of these examples and why don't we just jump to Singapore right now. You talked about mitigation and adaptation, they have a plan. Do you want to describe that a little bit?
Vinod Thomas: Yes. I think this distinction is so important that climate action comprises both adaptation and mitigation.
Now, adaptation on the one side is to be prepared for, let's say a three-fold change that is happening to places like Singapore.
One, the global temperature is rising, and so is the temperature in Singapore, perhaps one and a 1.1 degrees higher now and it continues to climb.
A second is that the sea level is rising about a millimeter a year and possibly another millimeter by the end of the century. And that is a direct hit on not only people living out by the seaside, but all over the nation.
The third is just the intensity of the rainfall. On that score, Singapore may have not seen the kind of precipitation and higher rainfalls as many other places currently have been facing.
The first two, warming and the sea level rise are here and now in the case of Singapore. So adapting to that is common sense and it has to be done. And so a good part of the recent expenditures, like improving the drainage, and also having a study about sea level rise and allocating resources in the budget already, is one step.
The announcement of the hundred billion for the next 50 to a 100 years with a sizeable amount going into defenses, say along the coastlines also falls in the category of adaptation. These are essential.
At the same time, we have to keep in mind that we cannot meet the problem by adapting alone. It's like if your basement is flooded, you can keep adapting and mopping the floor but at some point you have to turn off the tap.
And so in this case, mitigation is essential.
Now immediately the question comes up. Singapore's footprint is so small, how do you mitigate? Well, let's first start talking about the mitigation by both Singapore, but also the big emitters in a big way.
But countries like Singapore, certainly small economies in the Pacific and Bangladesh and others who also have small footprints, make a difference with the voice they express in a global fora everywhere. You can make yourself heard to say that this is a problem that affects us whether we are have a big footprint or not.
And one last thing when it comes to mitigation, Singapore and countries like Singapore have a great role in terms of the technology and the potential it has for providing examples of how renewables can be done.
Despite all odds Singapore also has wind technology in the works, solar and also plans to import solar-based energy. These would be incredible examples for the rest of Southeast Asia to scale up their efforts. So it's not just what Singapore does or itself, but just the availability and the financing of the technology that's good for everyone, including ourselves.
David Austin: I wanted to go back to some of the adaptations as well, because you mentioned drainage and the coastline defences. Is that also this term of polders that I've been reading about is, can you describe what is a polder?
Vinod Thomas: I might not describe it like an engineer would, but the drainage issue in the case of Singapore, [such as in the example of] Orchard Road, [which] has seen floods more recently, is a big ticket item. And there the internal part of the urban environment, but also the coastal lines. Both are hit by this twin phenomenon.
One, the temperature [is] rising and there is more water coming over, but also the melting of the glaciers, and that brings greater amount of water into the Republic. And so drainage is one part, but the other is building up the sea levels. For instance, the reclamation. And [it] needs to be three to four meters higher than it was, and nearly 70% of the coastline is now to be protected.
And the BCA (Building Construction Authority) is already working, on this, and some of the work is already complete. But the plan with the hundred billion would be to take this to scale and protect the adaptation side, Singapore from the worst of the climate crisis.
David Austin: You also mentioned that it's a 50 to a 100 years planned for a lot for these defences. And I believe you've also talked about how the earlier you spend money on things like this, the more returns you get for it. Is that right? So, are they spending in time to get that kind of benefit?
Vinod Thomas: That's correct. And the argument in favour of spending them early, is twofold. One, the cost of some of these technologies, in terms of how much more you will have to do later would be higher.
And two, simply put, the earlier you do it that are more years for which you gain the benefits. However, the opportunity cost of using the funds, in terms of other important expenditures like health, education and so on is also a consideration.
But weighing the two my quick, back of the envelope calculation is that of the 100 billion that is proposed to be spent over the next 50 to 100 years, the bulk of that should come in the first, 10, 20 years. Because, that is when one is able to withstand the challenge more effectively, technologically, and that is when you would have more years to get the benefits so that the longer you wait, the higher the costs are, human and technological.
David Austin: What do you foresee since this is the foreseeable podcast? Right now, are you optimistic, pessimistic? What do you think is the most likely course of events that's going to happen?
Vinod Thomas: Now, at the end of the day, we will land somewhere. The question is, will it be a hard landing or soft landing?
And if the boutique examples can be scaled up and we can really see the carbon emissions in the air from 415 back to 400 and below in the next 10-12 years, that would be an optimistic scenario. But the indifference that we are now seeing, unfortunately, coupled with very unfortunate incidents like the burning of the Amazon, the fires from Indonesia, the United States rolling back its climate policies, and the continued rise of carbon emissions in India and China, and the small islands and low lying countries are enabled to build defenses – do give us a room for pessimism, I must say.
But that is where the question of whether that degree of catastrophic outlook will then change mindsets fast enough?
David Austin: Right. Well then if you were going to jot down some bullet points of the key concrete actions that should be taken immediately, what would they be? What would the top of that list be?
Vinod Thomas: Top of the list would be switching from fossil fuels to renewables, for which the technology is available. Even competitiveness is beginning to be assured, but very forceful actions directed both by the governments and the business community of countries. For example, of Southeast Asia.
Along with that, I would say the financing availability for facilitating some of the transitional things. Hundreds of billions need to go into that and the multilateral organisations need to both come to the table with these resources, but also help countries put forward proposals that could actually elicit those funds in real time.
David Austin: Okay. Well, thank you very much. This was very educational to me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
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