2-0-6-2-0-1-2-1-5 GOKA 2-9-9-8-6, this is GOKA 2-0-6-2-1-2-1-5 GOKA 2-9-9-9-9-6 on guard GOKA 2-9-9-9-9-6, GOKA 2-0-6-2 on guard Okay, my minute is 6-8-8-8, please go away quickly, order to run for a minute Six is calling US military aircraft, please identify yourself I am E-9-6 military aircraft, conducting local military activities outside national airspace I am operating with the regard that is required under international law GOKA 2-9-9-8-6-6 on standby-1-2-1-2-1-5 GOKA 2-9-9-9-8-6, this is GOKA 2-9-9-9-8, this is GOKA 2-9-9-8, GOKA 2-9-9-9-9 I am working my minute is 6-8-8-8, please go away quickly, order to run for a minute Six is calling US military aircraft, please identify yourself Okay, in order to run for a minute Six is calling US military aircraft, please identify yourself This is a tiny name. This is a tiny name.  Please go away quickly in order to run. I am United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities outside national airspace. I am operating with due regard as required under international law. Lawful military activities outside national airspace. I am operating with due regard as required under international law. Lawful military activities outside national airspace. I am operating with due regard as required under international law. United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities outside national airspace. I am operating with due regard as required under international law. Please go away quickly in order to run. Please go away quickly in order to run. Station calling U.S. military aircraft. Please identify yourself. I am United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities outside national airspace. I am operating with due regard as required under international law. This is Chinese level. Please go away quickly in order to run. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Station calling U.S. military aircraft. Please identify yourself. This is Chinese level. Please go away quickly in order to run. Station calling U.S. military aircraft. Please identify yourself. This is Chinese level. Please go away quickly in order to run. I am United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities outside national airspace. I am operating with due regard as required under international law. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. I am United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities outside national airspace. Please go away quickly in order to run. Station calling U.S. military aircraft. Please identify yourself. This is Chinese level. Please go away quickly in order to run. I am United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities outside national airspace. I'm a United States military aircraft conducting lawful military activities outside national airspace. I am operating with due regard, as required, under international law. Aircraft first meeting, say again.


Good evening, everybody, and welcome to COP-OFF, the Alternative Climate Conference. Thank you for joining us for this two-day event that will be held online on our DM25 channel. In these two days, we will gather progressives from all around the world to discuss some of the most pressing issues of our time with ideas you were probably not able to hear at COP-27. Tonight's panel will feature Croatian philosopher and DM25 co-founder Srećko Horvat, law and law director Asad Rehmann and economist and co-president of Basic Income Earth Network, Guy Standing. Srećko was unfortunately not able to join us tonight, so before we start, we will watch a short video with him. In 2019, DM25 launched its Green New Deal, which was described by many as the most appropriate solution for the upcoming and current climate crisis and social problems. So, three years later, the world is a lot different. So, Srećko, can you tell me what is your take on the Green New Deal for Europe now? Well, I think DM's Green New Deal for Europe is still the most comprehensive radical plan for, you know, reinvestment into green technologies, but which is also connected to jobs, to migration, to public infrastructure and so on. And it was actually tested on the ballot box. I think more than two million people across Europe during the European elections voted for this plan, which was also a time before many others were still not talking that much about the Green New Deal. What changed in the meantime, I think, is that, besides what DM25 addressed correctly, the economic crisis, the climate crisis and the social crisis, today, three years later, we also have the never-ending war, which has direct effects on the climate itself, and we also had the pandemic, you know, which is also not finished yet. So, in that sense, I think the situation rapidly drastically deteriorated during the last three years, and there is also what you can see with COP27 these days, which was, or still is, sponsored by Coca-Cola. And it's the greenwashing which happened in the meantime, which means that the system was really able to co-opt, and not only to co-opt, but to again sell the story that only through some cosmetic changes, so we will drive electric cars now, we will be able to save the climate. Well, we're not going to be able to save the climate unless we have a radical response, and in that sense, I think also the Green New Deal today, as a term, but also as an idea and what it contains, mainly in Europe, is not sufficient, because if a Green New Deal is not at the same time international, if at the same time it's not requesting that the countries of the Third World are not going to pay their debts, you know, to the International Monetary Fund, to the World Bank, to private banks and so on, then it's not a radical plan at all. So, in that sense, I think we have to go beyond the Green Deal, Green New Deal, and also besides just working through the institutions, through political parties, we have to build spaces of autonomy, not outside, but in parallel to the current system. So, instead of just waiting for the state to invest into your electricity, for instance, you should do it yourself, you know, you should experiment, reinvent different forms of living, I would say, which might sound utopian, it might sound it's on a small scale, but at the same time while we are working on the international, transnational scale, I think we individuals, but also collectives, communities should be working towards much more radical, I think, ways of living together, ways of sustainable living. Yes, but you just mentioned the Third World and of course this international position of us here in Europe that we should look at the whole world as a whole. So, do you really think that at this point in history with these really, really emerging climate changes, can you give this same advice that you're giving for Europe to countries where you do not have the basic necessities? How can we cope with that? I can imagine how we can live with it here, but how can we really make it global and international today? Well, I think we have a lot to learn precisely from these countries because many countries of the so-called Global South have been on the front lines of climate, not change, not climate crisis or climate collapse.  You have both the nuclear reality and you have climate crisis which these communities already experienced. You know, they are in a way living after the apocalypse. They are living after a catastrophe which is yet to come to Europe itself, you know. Although also in Europe you could have seen, you know, the continuous heat waves this summer now, I mean still it's the hottest November in history probably in Europe. Then as effects you have droughts, you have less rainfall or you have stronger storms. So you can see that, you know, rapidly we will have to not adapt to the situation, but find ways of coping with the situation, find ways of rebuilding, which I think we cannot just rely on the state and we cannot just rely on some, you know, European big other, you know, on the European Commission or Tehr Green Deal or the Green Washing. But besides I think just, you know, building political parties, running for elections, we have to build much stronger movements. And in that respect, I think we can learn a lot from the movements and social struggles from the so-called Global South, in which way indigenous communities actually succeeded to overcome different catastrophes, you know, from genocide to natural disasters, in which way countries in Latin America today are, you know, rethinking in what way to approach Lithu, you know, should it be nationalized, should it be commons, in which way to deal with extractivism and so on. And I think this respective Europe is falling behind, you know, many other countries across the world are actually a few steps ahead, whether it's in their thinking or in the practicalities, what kind of economic social measures they are already undertaking. The apocalypse has been one of the central points of your pot, mostly in your book after the apocalypse. But you always mentioned this plurality of the concept.  There are more and more apocalypses that are happening all the time. So, do you think that we need more apocalypses in order to finally make some real change? And what do you think this change would look like? You know, in this kind of, I would say, hyperinflations of the terms of apocalypse, the end of the world and catastrophe, you know, I think terms are getting mixed up because originally the apocalypse meant the revelation. So it's not the end of the world, but it actually means the revelation of, also in the original sense, it meant the revelation of what was wrong with the system at that time and it also went into the direction of rebellion against that system. You know, that was the original apocalypse. And I think what we have today is, yeah, a plurality, as you say, of apocalypses in the sense of a plurality of revelations. You know, COVID-19 was an apocalypse in the sense of revelation that it revealed a lot about in which way essential workers are treated, in which way the economy is functioning, in which way the divide between Western countries, developed countries and the so-called undeveloped countries, in which way this division is functioning. Then, of course, the war between Russia and Ukraine or between NATO and Russia and perhaps maybe also China soon is also a revelation, which is a revelation about the possibility of nuclear annihilation. And in that sense, I think if we look at previous catastrophes, you could see that some of them, volcano explosions, like the explosion of the lucky volcano in Iceland, contributed in a way to the French Revolution.  Different various other catastrophes during history helped actually to, for people, not just to cope with it, to, you know, be resilient this term, which is highly ideological, but to actually rebuild, reinvent different forms of society, which is not to say that we need an even bigger catastrophe so that things will get better. I don't believe in that because I think if there will be a third world war, it will be the last war because it will be a nuclear war. And whether it's tactical nuclear weapons or strategic nuclear weapons, I don't see any difference in that because even if you have a tactical nuclear weapon, you know, the next outcome might be a full-blown nuclear war. So, yeah, today we are faced with several, I would call them eschatological threats, the nuclear threat, climate crisis, pandemics, the never-ending war and extinction, and all of them are intertwined and all of them are mutually reinforcing each other because if you have, you know, a disastrous climate catastrophe or crisis, as you could have seen this summer with the heat waves, you know, in France, when Laura, the river in France went dry and it put in danger the nuclear reactors and the nuclear power plants would have a direct relation between the climate and nuclear energy or war and nuclear energy like Zaporizhia now in Ukraine. And you can see that these different esatological threats are intertwined. People are realizing that, you know, this kind of situation cannot go on because at one point it will be the end. So hello, Guy, and thank you so much for being with us tonight. Thank you for inviting me.  I think all of us who are watching the process must be in a state of anger and considerable concern. But I think that we have an alternative agenda and I'm very pleased to be talking about that this evening. That's what I wanted to start with and thank you for this introduction because I think it's very important to say that COP 27 has ended and of course it ended with all of the empty promises that ended also in the recent years. So as we know, the oceans have been left out of the calls for the Green New Deal and we know they must be the center of the fight against climate change. And in your recently published book, The Blue Commons, Rescuing the Economy and the Seed, you are telling us a lot about this. So can you tell us something more about this largely neglected topic? And also can you tell us, was it discussed at COP 27 in a serious way or not? Yeah, I think the book was addressing a huge array of related issues from a progressive point of view. And I was very pleased that Yanis endorsed the book and it addresses something that extraordinarily left and progressives in general have neglected for generations. I think to remind us all of the realities, the sea covers 71% of the world's surface and it contributes so much to the global economy that if it was a country, it would be the sixth largest economy in the world. And yet strangely, people talk about a Green New Deal when they don't talk about a Blue New Deal. But actually global warming is affecting the seas and everything that lives in it, which means about two thirds of everything that is living on this planet live in the sea to a much greater extent than on land. And of course, the sea provides the greatest carbon sink, the greatest absorber of carbon. And of course, 30% of all fossil fuels come from the sea, oil and gas and other things. And the neglect of the marine economy in discussions has been epitomized by the COP 27 discussions today. And I noticed that when the first draft of the incredibly vague and annoying agreement was drawn up on Friday, there were a few paragraphs called Ocean, something on the ocean. Anybody reading that would think that the person was either drunk or a lawyer out of control. It was totally vague, it didn't have any commitments, it didn't have any substance whatsoever. And here we have a situation where the process of what's been happening in the sea is so catastrophic that there we are in danger of next July. And I predict this unless something dramatic happens, next July we'll begin a Wild West frenzy of deep sea mining in the oceans, in the middle of the world, which could release incredible destructive mind-boggling damage to the world. And yet at the moment there is no process by which it can be stopped. Because under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, drawn up in 1982, they set up the International Seabed Authority, a tiny body based in Kingston, Jamaica, which has an agreement that if a country applies to do deep sea mining, the ISA, the International Seabed Authority has two years in which to draw up a mining code based on precautionary principles and based on sharing the benefits of anything that happens in the sea. And that process was started by Nauru on behalf of the Canadian mining company acting in collaboration with the government of that tiny Pacific nation and they gave notice and the notice expires next July. And if there's not a mining code introduced by that stage, they'll be able to go ahead with mining. And the damage that this could do is extraordinary. Scientists are unanimous that the precautionary principle is not being respected and we could have terrible ecological damage while the pursuit of profits is accelerated. And that's just one instance of the potential of the blue economy. And I get quite annoyed with my friends on the left when we are not addressing the numerous issues from fishing, from aquaculture, from mining, from sea sand being excavated, billions of tonnes of sea sand are being excavated for use in cement every year. 50 billion tonnes are taken from seabeds and this is causing ecological decay. It's causing flooding. It's causing rising levels of threat to communities around those places where the sea sand has been taken. And these sort of issues are multiplying with acidification in the ocean with 11 million tonnes of plastic going into the ocean without restrictions. And yet all these issues are being greenwashed, bluewashed, whatever the term you want to use. And I'm very alarmed that we on the left, if you like, are not coming up with a systematic strategy. And that's what the book is all about, how to respond to the crisis in the blue economy. Thank you, Guy. And I also wanted to ask you a question and it's related to this connection between the earth and the sea, which I think a lot of people do not think about when they think of the blue economy. And I think it's a big problem because when you think of floods and when you think of, I don't know, cities underwater, which is the apocalypse that Srećko was talking about, you think, of course, about the earth that is going to be underwater, but you do not think about what you're doing to the seas and the water that will, of course, influence the earth. So can you tell me about this connection and how can we, in a way, let people know what you do in the sea is going to affect the earth very easily? I think that this connection, it's same like with the climate change. I think now when people are starting to see evidence of the climate change in their own backyards, they're aware of it. Before that, it was some kind of an abstract climate change, something that will happen maybe one day in 100 years. But now when we see it, we can relate to it. So is there a way that we can explain? Of course, you said a couple of things like the mining, like the floods and like taking the sand from the sea, which also because I live in Montenegro half of the year, I know what happened with taking the sand out of the sea, what can happen on the long run. So can you give us some examples that can maybe explain people how this connection is? Well, it should be evident, of course, but most people don't see it. Yeah, I mean, it's a very complex set of issues. And I want to go back to the COP 27 process that was just concluded when we're talking this evening, or hopefully has concluded with some sort of agreement. We're not entirely clear on that. The whole negotiations has been couched in terms almost like a pantomime.  And everybody's been talking about the loss and damage fund to be set up whereby the rich countries could contribute to that fund and help out in dealing with ecological disasters in developing countries. There's nothing particularly wrong with that process. I think we should all be supporting that process in general. But what has been happening in this COP and in all previous COPs is that the real villains have been enabled to escape focus. The real villains, of course, are the fossil fuel companies and the global financial institutions behind the process. And I'll come back to answer your question you'll see in a moment. Now, these two blocks of capital interests have been avoiding being in the limelight and have been getting on with doing what they've been doing systematically for the last 100 years, which has been expanding capitalism and pursuing rapid rates of economic growth based on profiteering and financial investment. And when it comes to the sea, which is getting to your point, what we've actually been seeing is that UNCLOS in 1982 introduced the biggest state enclosure of history. We always think of land as being enclosed and then privatized and all the problems associated with that, going back to Karl Marx's analysis in the 1840s. But actually the biggest enclosure has been in the sea. And about 160 million square kilometers were private state, turned into state property. And since then it's allowed governments to privatize whether it be with fishing, whether it would be with mining, or whether it would be with offshore wind or whatever. And they've been enabling finance to come in and back corporate capital in investing in blue economy activities. Now, finance has always wanted one thing, which is to maximize profits. And private equity, which has become the dominant force of finance and the dominant force in the blue economy as I document in the book, is a particular virulent form of capitalism because it wants to maximize short-term profits and then move on. It's not like a long-term shareholder capitalism. It's a short-term profit maximizing, move in, move out, take profits, never mind what happens afterwards. Now, what this has meant is that systematically we've had a process by which, for example, industrial fisheries have expanded hugely, drawing up fishing and access agreements with developing countries. Their industrial fisheries, huge ships have been going in, plundering all the fish, leaving fish populations devastated so that our children and grandchildren will have hardly any sea fish to eat because the species are disappearing. Over a third of the 28,000 known species of fish are at this moment endangered. It's an extraordinary development. But behind that process is governments and finance subsidizing the process of taking from the sea. And one of the worst phenomenon of all is that industrial fishing, and I'm focusing on that for a second, industrial fishing has benefited and can only function in long-distance seas because of billions of dollars given by governments in fuel subsidies and capacity enhancing subsidies. And one of the things that we should be focusing on is saying we should have a war on subsidies. We should have a war on subsidies not only for industrial fishing. That's $35 billion a year is spent on subsidies for industrial fisheries that goes to increase profits and to devastate the fish stocks. But also $64 billion of subsidies are giving to oil and gas exploration, much of it being done in the sea, and that oil and gas exploration is being done in coral reefs and around seashores, devastating effects on long-term marine life. Another area that's happening which gets closer to your concern with the integration of land and sea is the development of aquaculture, fish farming around the world. And traditional types of farming of fish and localized commoners doing fishing have been replaced largely by export-oriented industrial aquaculture. With big finance behind it and with the privatization of land around sea, and in particular the destruction of mangroves. Now mangroves are vitally important for the global ecology, but over one third of all mangroves in the world have disappeared since the 1980s, turned into profit centers for export-oriented aquaculture. And this has had devastating ecological and social effects and is partly responsible for part of the distress migration of old seafaring communities who have had their life ruined and replaced by industrial capital. But mangroves are so vital that 80% of the fish of the world, the sea fish of the world, are dependent on mangroves for breeding and other sources of food and so on. And yet this is happening, right? It's the same with the mining thing, the same with the sea sand that I mentioned earlier, and you can go through it and you can see also with tourism where there's disdain for the effects on the sea and the effects of what's happening in the sea on people. I can remind us all that luxury cruise liners use diesel fuel and they go into our ports in Europe and elsewhere and they keep their motors going the whole time they are in ports. And as a result, they're pumping out more greenhouse gas emissions than the cars of all countries in Europe per year. But why do we not give more attention to this? And there's a study which has shown that over 50,000 premature deaths take place in ports or communities around major ports of Europe each year as a result of throat cancers and other illnesses due to the pollution caused by the big luxury cruise liners and container ships that are unregulated. They are not taxed on the pumping of terrible carbon emissions that we should all be alarmed about. We should be having a major campaign to say these people should be charged so much that they make damn sure to turn off their engines and if possible stay out of our ports. But we need to first of all articulate an agenda a realisation that the blue economy is as important as any part of the green economy. So is taxing the solution, do you think that by taxing all the ships that do the things they do, would that be a solution to the problem or just stop doing it? I don't play golf but there's a saying that you can't win a game of golf with only one club. You have to have a variety of policies. I do believe that we should have ecological levees. I do believe in high carbon levees. I believe in a frequent flier levee. I believe in a levee on bunker fuels so that they have to take account of the fact that the costs are going to be very high if they continue to do their practices. Of course I believe in regulations to stop those processes. I also think for example that the noise issue is something that we should take into account. The sound of noise of these big ships in the ocean is equivalent to a thunderclap all the time, going continuously, a thunderclap. Imagine that. The sound in the sea has been doubling every decade. The noise in the sea has had incredibly disruptive effects on breeding patterns of fish and mammals and other species as well as having tremendous effects on the capacity of the oceans to be an ecological source of benefit for humanity and for nature. We need to have a levee on that. We need to say you create the noise, you will pay. So stop it. Of course I also believe in regulations but to answer your question slightly differently I think that the most important thing is to put the blue commoners back in control. The blue commoners are the people who depend on the sea, who work in the sea or around it, who know it, who are the most interested in reviving the life in and around the sea and with preserving and conserving the natural environment in which they live and work and this means we have to focus on governance reforms, major governance reforms for devolving powers and responsibilities to who are effectively the stewards the stewards who looking after the sea for the commoners and for the commons and respect the precautionary principle, respect the public trust doctrine which I discussed in the book and various other principles of the commons. This to me is the progressive position. We need to have a mutualised system rather than one dominated by finance behind the scenes and big corporate capital and I think the agenda is a multiple one but first of all as we're talking today it's vital that the blue commons is put in the centre of our political consideration. Yes, thank you Guy and we have a very interesting question from the audience. So the question is how do we establish an international alliance to stop private companies of destroying sea beds and environment and also are large scale offshore wind farms the good solution? Let me first relate to the first question. I think anybody watching the COP 27 nonsense that's been taking place this week will very quickly realise that there's no hope that that process will be successful in a longer term. There are too many conflicting interests. It depends on a consensus which you're never going to get with the likes of the Saudis and one side and the oil companies behind the scenes and the finance people playing quiet and lobbying. You're not going to get very far. And I think that what we do need is an international movement of direct action. I am 100% supporter of the Extinction Rebellion and the Ocean Rebellion. I'm very pleased they sent a group to the launch of my book and I've been interacting with them. I think they're fantastic people. We need to realise that the only way we're going to get our governments to take some action is to embarrass them constantly by bringing up the facts, bringing up the facts and shoving it in their faces and saying this is unacceptable. The British government for example has been subsidising oil production to an extraordinary extent in the North Sea. The government has been subsidising both profits and the costs of production. It has been subsidising aquaculture by making sure that the big corporations are not having to pay the full production costs. We need to shove these things into the faces of the politicians and say this is not acceptable. This is totally unacceptable. You can do something. You can do something that is very practical. I think that the question is destroying the sea beds. I think we need to get this urgent action to stop the beginning of deep sea mining in a major way next July. We have to have a campaign in the next few months to say stop it. You must be put on pause. You must revise the article of UNCLOS which allows that two year period and say we are not prepared to go with deep sea mining until there is evidence accepted by scientists, accepted by the global community that they will not do ecological damage. I think that would stop deep sea mining in its tracks. At the moment, people are not sufficiently aware of the threat in the public, many of us. At the same time, we are not taking action to demand it. That is the first question. There are other parts of it that I could go into. The second one, I am a sceptic when it comes to large scale offshore wind farms. I have a chapter in the book on the dangers of offshore wind farms. People think that renewable energy is somehow the magic solution, the magic wand to deal with the greenhouse gas emissions. But of course, constructing those offshore wind farms involves the mining of incredible number of resources. Many of them scarce, many of them now only found largely in the sea requiring mining. The ecological damage of creating vast offshore sea wind farms is not fully appreciated. I think that there is a lot of evidence that governments have been waiving the need for precautionary principles to be respected. Not having environmental impact assessments done before allowing for wind farm construction. And allowing huge profits to be made by multinational corporations that are unnecessarily large, unnecessarily destructive of environment. And at the same time, we're not realizing the ecological damage that much of this is entailing. So for me, we should be careful. I think in the end, a progressive view means that we have to restrict the use of energy. Cut the amount of energy we use and have a different type of economic growth or degrowth because that is the only long term solution. Yes, that's what I wanted to ask you, actually. So also during COP 27, coral conservation groups alarmed over catastrophic losses of coral reefs, you just mentioned. And paradoxically, the coral reefs are one of Egypt's main tourist attractions in Sharm el Sheikh. And they are very much existentially threatened by the climate change. And I think that people also when they think of coral reefs, they think of their beauty, but they don't think of how important they are for the ecosystem. So can you tell us why is it so important to save the coral reefs? What can we do about it, of course? And also, what do you and your book concretely propose to save the seas and the species in it and, of course, being important for the whole ecosystem? Yeah, I'm glad you've raised this because I got a lot of material on the destruction of the coral reefs. I think it's something that we all see and hear and understand from the blue panic and other sources. The one that's really making my blood boil is taking place off the coast of Mauritania. And there is the world's biggest deep sea coral and BP has basically done a deal whereby it's destroying that deep sea coral. That deep sea coral is the breeding ground for a huge proportion of the sea fish in the whole area. And its destruction is somehow justified by saying, well, we will compensate for the loss of this coral reef by paying some money to start something else somewhere else or support something else somewhere else. This shouldn't wash. It should not be allowed. You cannot replicate a coral reef which has taken probably millions of years to become a part of the global ecosystem and somehow manage that you could pay off and build something else somewhere else that would somehow compensate the ecosystem.  And the need to protect coral reefs goes with the need to strengthen marine protection zones. And these are supposedly one of the great white hopes of the blue regrowth or blue growth system. But of course, they're paper parks. They're paper parks. Most of the protection zones are not protected. Most have more deep sea fishing trawling along the seabed than other areas. And that's a reality I documented in the book. We need proper regulated protection zones with proper monitoring, proper policing and proper penalties for the commercial interests that are ravaging them with impunity at the moment. So the whole system is one in which we need to have a progressive agenda, a progressive anger, motivating what we do, and one in which the left can put capital and particularly finance on the defensive. What they're doing is totally amoral, totally exploitative, totally destructive, and that anybody once they realize what's happening is likely to be on our side. And that is one of the reasons why I really want us to have a strategy, a progressive strategy for responding to the blue economy. You live near Geneva, as you told us before we started the conversation. And it's interesting that Switzerland, one of the world's richest nations, has a very ambitious climate goal. It promises to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030. But the Swiss don't intend to reduce emissions by that much in their own borders. Instead, they are giving money to foreign nations like Ghana to reduce emissions there and give Switzerland credit for it. We also have example of rich countries in the north using electric vehicles, not thinking where the lithium is coming from and what are the circumstances of using it. So are these examples of good practices, of course they're not, or just running away from the responsibilities in the global north countries? Well, I don't think any government is blameless in these circumstances. As you say, I live in Switzerland for much of my time and I am pleased that I have to pay, in effect, a fuel tax, a levy, a carbon levy. And I do think that this is a healthy type of tax or levy, which is recycled to people. One of the things I argue in the book is that we need to have eco-levis on all the destruction of the commons. Any activity which is taking from the commons that is creating depletion of the commons, we should have a levy. I call it a levy because it should be put into a commons fund from which common dividends could be paid out to people who will be using it to do better forms of work, community work, commoning and so on. I won't go into the details here. But then the capital fund from the levies would be charged with doing sustainable economic investment, much like the Norwegian fund does. Very well by comparison with the rest of the world, extremely well. And I think that the Swiss have at least this one good thing. They've also had good things on blocking big lorries, for example, going on the roads, which has led to an incredible improvement in the quality of the air, incidentally. But the principle of having a carbon levies is that we need high carbon levies if we're going to discourage people from consuming more and more energy. But the only problem with that is that it would be regressive. It would mean that the poor person pays a higher percentage of their income in the levy than the rich person. And the only way to avoid that regressive effect is to guarantee that all the revenue from the levies are recycled in equal common dividends or basic incomes. That I think is the progressive view, and I believe it should be regarded as a common property right, an economic right. And then I think you can move to a system where you are actively encouraging a reduction in the use of energy. And that is essential. Thank you, Guy. We have a question from Dushan Paiovic who asks you, what's your opinion on nuclear power? Nuclear power plants are usually placed near the sea. So how would certain possible catastrophes affect the sea life? Well, I've been traumatized myself because I was working in Ukraine for many, on and off over several years. And the Chernobyl accident, whatever you want to call it, has always traumatized me. The dangers of nuclear power are something that we all should be worried about. And yet I find myself saying, to be honest, I'm not sure I know enough to have a strong view on saying that no nuclear power should be allowed. I think that incredibly strong precautionary principles have to be applied. I think incredibly strong international controls have to be applied. And I don't think we should be thinking of nuclear power as some sort of magic solution anymore than renewables are a magic solution. But I'm a little eclectic on whether to have a ban or allow some sort of nuclear energy. I find myself in one of those few cases, I think, where I'm eclectic. And you mentioned, of course, the yachts and the problems that all of these rich people's goodies make in the sea. So the role of the super rich and super charging climate change is rarely seriously discussed at the climate conference. And according to a report by Oxfam, billionaires emit a million times more greenhouse gases than a person in the forest, 90% of the world's population. So what would be your proposal to restructure COP and make it less a charade and more a conference that would make sense to a world as a whole? And not just global north greenwashing that is happening on the back of the global south. Well, you're asking two different types of question there, of course, Maya. One, of course, I think with the super yacht issue, and I know the report that you're talking about from Oxfam, and I agree with it and have given comments on it. Essentially, we need to have huge levies or taxes on super yachts. Super yachts are incredibly polluting. They're also an eyesore and a disgraceful adjunct of a global rentier capitalism in which the plutocrats can cause most of the pollution and yet pay hardly any price. So I think it's a no brainer that we should have high super yacht levies because they're not paying the costs of the damage that they're doing socially economically and ecologically. So that one is definitely something we should be advocating in our politics. I think that the bigger issue of the cop process is that we should be saying far less emphasis should be placed on it as a great hope. Each year, the hype around cop 26, cop 27, and so on gets worse. And what should make us absolutely furious is that next year, cop 28 is set to be held in the UAE, the second biggest producer of fossil fuels in the world. And we're meant to take the process seriously and think that they're going to act like Turkey is voting for Christmas. It's a process that is a total farce, except that it's tragic. And I think that we should mock it and be far more adamant about alternative processes and mechanism. There's a cop 15 on biodiversity in Montreal in December, December the 7th to the 19th, where many of the issues that concern me will be potentially on the agenda. But I would say that as long as you have a consensus system of countries in which everybody has to agree, you're going to get blah, blah, blah, as a certain young lady would say. And you're going to get window dressing, blue washing as well as greenwashing, et cetera, et cetera. And false dichotomies like developing countries versus developed countries and so on, rather than focus on the capitalistic system that is really fundamentally the cause of this incredible crisis. So Guy, as an economist, what would be your, let's say, first three steps in order to solve the climate crisis and the global inequality? Well, I don't want to repeat things I've said, but I do think that we have to socialize capital. We have to re-marginalize finance. We have to get the big financial institutions, the BlackRock, the Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan out of the decision-making process and get the big conglomerations of multinational corporations out of the process of governing what is being done. I also believe, of course, that we have to have a fundamental overhaul of our income distribution system in which basic income for all would be a foundational anchor of that system. I believe that reform would lead to people doing more forms of work that are not resource-depleting and ecologically destruction, making less emphasis on jobs.  Jobs, jobs, jobs. Jobs are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. I want people to be able to do more commoning, more work of care, more volunteering, more ecological work, more leisure in the classical sense of that term. And I think the left has lost it if they think that maximizing jobs is the answer to any sensible question. It's ridiculous. So for me, it's a fundamental transformation where we, in DM25 and other movements, we have to focus. We have to have a new vocabulary, a new agenda, a new sense of excitement, put the future back. That's where we should be going. So thank you very much for this opportunity to talk to you. It's been a, I hope, it's a pleasure for me. I hope it's been interesting for your listeners. Yeah, thank you, Guy. If you have time, we have two more questions from the audience. Okay. One is from Serbia, where I am from, and it's a selfish question. So what advice would you give to people from a country, Serbia, with an autocratic ruler, on how to stop eryothinto minds from opening when you want it to happen because of the cheap lithium? I think we all are realizing we all come from Serbia. We all come from wherever it is that these activities are taking place. It is really a question of solidarity. I hate the tendency of some people to say, not in my backyard, but it's okay if it takes place somewhere else. I think that we all internationally have to be energized by the type of reotinto activities. And as you say, backed often by the international bureaucracy in Brussels and Strasbourg or wherever it might be in Washington or wherever. I think that we have to be consistent in opposing these developments wherever they take place. And we have to mobilize as far as we can to combat them. And that means, first and foremost, collecting the information, the relevant information, disseminating it to all our networks and building up active campaigns. And this thing we can say to each other today is there is no excuse for passivity. There is no excuse for sitting back and complaining. It's up to us. And that is the key message we should be giving to each other. Okay, and one more question toward the end. Instead of a big nuclear plant, can we have small household nuclear plants, a chemical element that will give energy by transforming itself into another. I go back to my last the question, the answer I gave on nuclear power. It's something it's a subject that I deliberately remain eclectic on, because I haven't done sufficient study.  And too many politicians and too many people have opinions with like the Donald Trump's of the world, when they have absolute no justification for having that opinion. And I think this is one of those that I would I would listen to the, the experts if you like, and particularly people on the progressive side of thinking, who are going to be taking account of the social distribution ecological and economic issues that come up. Thank you. Thank you guy. Unfortunately, Assad was held up in the final COP meeting so he will not be able to join us tonight. But it was really great talking to you and you answered the most of the questions I had for tonight and thank you for being my only guest tonight. Well, thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guy. And of course, thank you all for watching us and join us tomorrow. Same time, same place for another COP panel. Other organizations charge high ticket prices for their events. We decided to offer these for free in order to enable everyone to attend. Still, if you're able to please donate through the link down below. Carpe diem and see you tomorrow.


Well, hello friends, it's Sandy, artist and paper crafter here on YouTube and today I'm calling this one indecisive frog Although it's not the frog that's indecisive. It's a little more of me and my coloring that were indecisive and even though I thought about starting this one over once I figured out what colors I wanted to use that Maybe this would be more educational to just let you see that sometimes I change colors along the way and With Copic markers since they're transparent. That's one of the benefits of Their property of their transparency is that you can change the color as you go This YG01 at first I thought was going to be more color I thought there's gonna be more color on the page and there wasn't but then I thought wait a minute What if I put a lighter color and I should have done a YG 000 in the middle because YG01 and 00 are really not far apart from each other So I ended up with what looked like a yellow frog So I got out, you know a different marker and tried to Change the color again So the YG21 just to see if that was intense enough and it wasn't quite One of the problems that you have is that there's no mathematical science to say if you go this many digits darker That it's going to automatically be that much darker It just doesn't happen because each one seems to progress at a different rate. Don't know why that is Probably some science reason that I just am not understanding But I looked on my Copic hex chart Which you can get from my website if you don't have one yet You might want to check that out if you're a new colorist because it's really helpful But I looked on the hex chart for greens that were more on the yellow green side than the blue green side Because I wanted this frog to feel very yellow green So YG13 worked and then I blended it in with my YG01 And I was looking at that and thinking he's still kind of pale I want more contrast. I love contrast contrast to me is what makes an image catch your eye So even though we've got the contrast of the black stamped image We still don't have contrast in the color. It feels very Kind of flat. There's a very slight shade around the outside edge, but it's pretty flat And then I started thinking well, what if I add A little bit of texture in there Maybe the texture and then bringing it in toward the center of the frog's face was going to work So I started doing that by doing large dots to the outside As it got to the center getting smaller dots This can end up looking like he's got a disease So if you use this you need to use it selectively and in kind of the right way so that it doesn't look like you've got chicken pox on your little froggy So I'm I'm kind of trying to figure out as I'm doing this What direction am I going to go with this? But I kept adding a little bit of shading to the bottom even though it was his face that I was worried about The body was not going to be an issue So then I thought well, I need to bring that in more so that it looks more uniform The yg2 3 was too dark so I went to the 1 3 to make it a little bit lighter And then I took my yg 0 1 And went just over the whole thing to soften those dots because they were just a little too too dotty looking for me And then I went in with a yg 0 7 thinking okay yg 0 7 should be dark and then it was like this blue green color I don't know why a yg color is blue green, but it is So I should have looked at the chart for that one and I didn't I just grabbed it out of my bag So there was a boo boo So I covered that up with yg 6 7 just putting enough of a definitely more yellow green color over top of it to try to Nullify a little bit of that blue greenness and add a little bit depth as well So the yg 6 7 started making me a little happier And I just started carrying that around the image a little bit deepening some of my shadows Just so I would have a little extra contrast Because I wanted him to to really pop I decided to add a little color to his eyeballs because eyeballs look a little cuter if they have Kind of a c shape at the bottom of it and I used a blue and a blue green color to do those And then I wanted him to sit on something So I took some of the same greens that I had used and I wasn't sure where I was going I just kind of started drawing a little shape. I was picturing a leaf that's floating on the water So that it would kind of go up and over the surface of the water You can probably see I have a light pencil line in there That I tried to keep my sentiment and the bottom of my frog and the paper lined up But this was going to kind of float up and above a little bit so I had a little freedom to Sort of make it a little on the swoopy side So that he could look like he's really sitting on this in the water And adding my little just a little bit little tiny bit of shading with that darker green to the leaf I did a real simple water. I mean, I just wanted to have a flood of color And you can get a good flood of color if you have a good juicy marker If your marker is not juicy, you may end up with a little problem going on because you'll have streaks So there is my little guy And I did add a little bit more to the leaf so that there was like looked like there was a little bit of a leaf behind him as well as in front of him And on the card, I just I trimmed it down So I had a little slice of blue on the left hand side And popped the panel so that I could keep it really simple And I'm sorry card usually shouldn't be fancy. I think and his little expression Totally says I'm sorry All right guys, I hope you have enjoyed this video and seen my mistakes And cheered them on because I know lots of you like to see that everybody makes mistakes We all do it's just a matter of how you recover from them So go out and color something make sure you hit the subscribe button if you haven't yet There's a couple other videos here to watch and I will see you guys next time or over on the blog. Take care. Bye. Bye


Well, thank you for that introduction. But I'm actually a relatively new Aucklander. In fact, I used to work for Mary Quinn in Wellington once upon a time. And so I had an interesting experience a couple of years ago, so I just moved to Auckland. I've been working at University of Auckland for about a month and I was presenting, talking about similar topic, about innovation to the Red Meat Association of New Zealand. I gave my talk, and it was a different audience to tonight. There were a lot of farmers out there. You picture a stereotype of a farmer. They didn't quite all fit that stereotype. But sure enough, at the end of my talk, a sort of a tall, weather-beaten man got up and said, you know what's the problem with the New Zealand economy? Auckland. He told me that Auckland was the break. It was the bottleneck. We couldn't get our roads right. We've got housing problems. And so actually, if we could just get rid of Auckland, actually, the New Zealand economy would do an awful lot better. So this talk tonight is kind of a little bit of my response to that. And so I want to set the scene for the next two speakers and for our discussion afterwards. And think about, well, is it true if we got rid of Auckland, would New Zealand run a whole lot better? Or are there things that Auckland does that are unique and important to the economy? So tonight's really my response to that question. And so I'm going to start, you know, why are some places more innovative than others? We all have a sense that there are parts of the world that do innovation really well and parts of the world that perhaps don't do innovation so well. And so Auckland, one way of measuring innovation is to look at how many patents we put out per person. How many patents are we filing? Now, patents don't tell us everything about innovation. Some sectors we wouldn't use patents, but in other sectors they're really important and that's the same more or less the world round. So patents are a measure that we can use to get a little bit of a handle on innovation. And so between 1978 and 2008, Auckland produced one patent for every 750 people. Okay, so that's not too bad, right? It seems like there's a few of us running around coming up with new ideas. You know, how about Christchurch? Christchurch has produced one per thousand. And actually that turns out to be the New Zealand average, right? If you average right across the country and you look at how innovative New Zealand is, in fact, you know, Christchurch is the average. New Zealand has produced one patent for every thousand. So in fact, when we look at Auckland, on this measure Auckland seems to be more innovative than the rest of the country. And in fact this is a general trend, right? If you look at cities overseas, the larger the city, the more patents per person the city generates. And so if we go to Australia, and a city roughly about this, it's a little bit bigger than Auckland, but about the same size, if we look at Perth, then it actually turns out that Perth's produced one patent for every 750 people. And sure enough, if we look at Sydney and Melbourne, which are cities of about 4 million people, then we're producing, there's one patent for every 500 people. This actually turns out to be very, very general, right? If we look at lots of different parts of the world, the more people there are, the more patents per person, right? So that's not just more patents because there are more people. Those people are producing more patents individually because they're in bigger cities. And so this not only carries across from patents, we can look at other measures of innovation and find that on other measures of innovation, bigger cities do better. And even productivity, and ultimately, productivity is one of the most important, it's one of the things we want out of innovation. We want to generate higher productivity. We want higher wages. We want more value-add from workers. Bigger cities, indeed, produce more productivity and add more value per employee. And so Auckland fits this trend within New Zealand perfectly. As I've said, Auckland produces more patents per person than the other region in New Zealand. And in fact, it's more productive. In Auckland, enjoy a 25% productivity premium over firms in other parts of the country.  But almost all industries that aren't resource-based, actually if you move them to Auckland, they'll be more productive. So size matters. Size matters when it comes to innovation. But it's not everything. The example I like to use is comparing Detroit versus San Francisco. So you think of Detroit, but we think of car manufacturing. And in fact, Detroit for the long period of time had the three largest car manufacturers in the world. It had all the size and scale you could want. Yet today, we know that it's a city that's bankrupt. The car manufacturers are struggling, and it's really finding it hard to reinvent itself. Whereas San Francisco, a city that's much more diverse, it's got the semiconductor industry, it's the hub of the biotech industry in the US, and it's also where software has taken off. So San Francisco, in a sense, is much more diverse. So it's not just about being the largest. If it was about being the largest, Detroit would be very successful today. It's also about what you do and the diversity of things that you do. And it turns out that cities that are more diverse in terms of their technological or industrial specialisations actually turn out to be doing things that are less common or more novel. And so they're doing things that perhaps they have less competition in. So why might that be? Well, this is partly because cities, particularly diverse cities, are a dating service for ideas. It's where ideas come into contact. And I like to use this example. This is actually a shameless plug for my book. But there is a lesson in this. So there's a great innovation on the cover of my book. It's the barcode. And it's really interesting to think about why did we end up with barcodes on all our products? Well, it required the meeting of two quite different ideas. The original barcode came up by the US National Railways Corporation. And they were looking at ways to keep track of their railway wagons. And so they had this idea. We'll paint these coloured strips on the side of these railway wagons. And that'll be a unique identifier for our wagons. And we'll stop losing them in different parts of the country. The problem was, and this was in the early 1960s when they didn't have an efficient way of reading them. And in fact, they had to wait another 20 years before the technology that they needed to read these barcodes actually became available. And that was the laser. Now, the laser actually was invented around the same time as the barcode. But it took 20 years for these technologies to meet and produce something that was usable. So what's going on in cities, in big, diverse cities, is that ideas are meeting and going on to create useful innovations. And so in fact, this is New Zealand regions. And so here's the diversity of industries within New Zealand regions. So the further out you are out here, the more industries that you support in your region. And so sure enough, Auckland's out here. If you're down this side, then you're much more specialised. You have fewer industries. And here's the uniqueness of those industries. So here, industries up here are not very unique. So everybody has those industries. And so Gisborne and the Hawkes Bay are up here. Whereas Auckland's down here. So Auckland's not only the most diverse economy in New Zealand, it's also doing things that no one else is. And again, this turns out to be a general trend. The more diversity, the more unique the things are that you're doing. And part of that is explained by the fact that you're allowing new ideas to come into contact and generate new industries. So Auckland has a greater diversity of industries than any other region in New Zealand. And many of these industries are unique to Auckland. Auckland's the only part of New Zealand participating in them. So actually, Auckland's not a break on the New Zealand economy. It's not the bottleneck. Auckland's our innovation engine. Auckland is our most productive and innovative city by almost any measure you can come up with. It's got a greater diversity of industries than any other New Zealand city. And many of these industries only exist here in Auckland. And I think the conclusion is that New Zealand will not succeed if Auckland doesn't succeed. So I did manage to get a response a little bit like that back to my dairy farmer, who I was talking to, but without all the charts. However, of course, we know that that's not all the story. We know actually there's a big wide world out there. So it's great that Auckland's the most innovative city in New Zealand, but actually there's a whole world out there. And we know there are much bigger cities and there are much more diverse cities out there. So what are we going to do about that? Instead of competing and thinking about what's going on in the rest of New Zealand, how does Auckland start thinking as if it was a city much larger to take on these bigger parts and more innovative parts of the world? Well, part of the clue lies in if we zoom in. So this is some work we did, and actually this is what I was doing that Saturday night on my laptop at home. I decided to construct a social network of inventors in New Zealand. So I downloaded a big patent database, looked at, and you can pull out because inventors write down their home address on the patent database, you can geolocate them, and then you can build their social network based on who they've worked with. So if you've filed a patent with someone else, then I take a guess that you know them and I can then reconstruct the network of people as they've interacted, as they've innovated. So this is the map of Auckland. What we learn is that, again, the bigger the city, the more networked the people are in that city. So Auckland has the densest network of innovators in New Zealand, but actually if we went to Sydney, Sydney has a denser network of innovators than Auckland. And if I go to Tokyo, Tokyo has a denser network of innovators than Sydney. So my first conclusion as to where Auckland needs to go is we need to get much better at connecting. We need to build connections. We need to make sure that our city is well connected and that we're actually innovating with others. It's no use to have this great social network if we're not sharing ideas, right? It's all very well-going for a beer with everybody in Auckland, but if you're tight-lipped about what you're doing and you're not prepared to share your ideas and exchange them and allow them to collide, then actually that social network is useless. And then my last point is really we need to diversify, right? I mean, so many times I hear that in New Zealand, well, you can't do that, right? New Zealand, we're good at farming, right? And so somehow what we do has to be connected to the land. Actually, we can compete globally on anything. And so we've got to stop telling ourselves, got to stop constraining ourselves about the types of things we can do. And the data shows that as we become more innovative, we will indeed diversify and become a more diverse economy. So I'm going to leave it at that.