TCSE: Ted Corpus Search Engine

Recorded at	June 15, 2022
Event	TED Countdown Dilemma Series
Duration (min:sec)	35:36
Video Type	Original Content
Words per minute	174.24 medium
Readability (FK)	42.78 very difficult
Speaker	TED Countdown


1	00:17	Did you have a position on carbon credits coming into today?
2	00:20	Tamara Toles O'Laughlin: Yeah. No, the position is no.
3	00:23	John Kilani: There must be something important in carbon markets, otherwise, people would have given up long ago.
4	00:28	Nat Keohane: So I came in today thinking, as a tool, carbon markets, carbon credits can be really valuable in creating the kind of economic incentives we need.
5	00:36	Julio Friedmann: Today, the carbon markets have no supply, no demand, no transparency, no regulation.
6	00:42	Other than that, they're perfect.
7	00:43	Donnel Baird: You buy a carbon offset from a forest but now the forest has burned down or they were going to chop the tree down but they didn't, and then they did.
8	00:51	Nili Gilbert: We know that we need carbon removals to scale dramatically.
9	00:55	Al Gore: Different points of view can add to the collective wisdom.
10	01:00	Inés Yábar: We'll work better if we work together.
11	01:02	How do we generate those connections that together move us forward?
12	01:06	James Dyke: The concern that I’ve got about net zero, you're probably going to disagree about this, it might be taking away some of the sense of urgency.
13	01:14	JF: We can be optimistic or we can be pessimistic.
14	01:16	But the work looks the same.
15	01:18	Is there anything that struck you about carbon credits or carbon markets that you want to talk about?
16	01:23	AG: Well, I'll wait until the session is over to give us some considered opinions on that.
17	01:28	[TED Countdown Dilemma Series]
18	01:35	[Is there a role for carbon credits in the transition to a fair,]
19	01:38	[net zero future?]
20	01:41	Lindsay Levin: Throughout the world, we find ourselves faced with self-inflicted and interconnected problems that challenge our social fabric, our economic security, and the very ability of the Earth to sustain us.
21	01:54	We're certainly not short on ideas to address these problems.
22	01:57	But we often get caught up in arguments against one another vying for supremacy instead of deciding on a course of action.
23	02:05	So how can we move forward?
24	02:07	It begins by acknowledging the difference between choices and dilemmas.
25	02:12	Some decisions come down to choice.
26	02:14	You weigh the alternatives, decide and move on.
27	02:18	But often, complex situations need both/and thinking instead of either/or.
28	02:23	They require us to hold competing values together rather than make straightforward choices.
29	02:29	We call these dilemmas.
30	02:34	I'm Lindsay Levin, co-founder of TED Countdown.
31	02:37	And this is why we launched our Dilemma Series.
32	02:40	To look at some of the thorniest issues in the climate space and see how, through deep listening and collaboration, we find pathways forward.
33	02:48	In our first Dilemma event, we tackled the question Is there a role for carbon credits in accelerating the transition to a fair net-zero world?
34	02:58	David Biello: First, let's start with some definitions.
35	03:01	A carbon credit is a tradable permit that usually represents one ton of carbon, either not emitted or removed from the atmosphere.
36	03:09	Carbon offsetting is the practice of buying carbon credits to compensate for carbon emissions generated elsewhere.
37	03:16	Carbon markets are where carbon credits are bought, sold and priced.
38	03:21	Net zero refers to a theoretical state in which overall human-produced carbon emissions are equivalent to zero because any ongoing emissions have been compensated or offset by removals.
39	03:34	LL: We're going to take you on a journey.
40	03:37	We'll explore why so many people have lost faith in how carbon markets and net-zero targets operate in practice.
41	03:44	We'll hear from people working in frontline communities to protect and restore nature and safeguard livelihoods.
42	03:50	And to close, we'll talk about solutions.
43	03:53	We hope this film will speak to those working in sustainability and beyond.
44	03:58	Whether you're directly able to influence the supply or demand side of carbon markets, or you're just interested in how we solve the climate crisis, these issues affect us all.
45	04:08	Let's start by hearing about some of the promises and pitfalls in a conversation between TED's David Biello and Gilles Dufrasne of Carbon Market Watch.
46	04:18	DB: Now, carbon credits are being used as a big tool to neutralize otherwise growing emissions.
47	04:24	Are they working?
48	04:26	Gilles Dufrasne: So my short answer to this would be that they're not.
49	04:31	First, because there is a major concern around the actual quality of those credits.
50	04:36	They're each supposed to represent a full ton of CO2 that's been reduced or removed and permanently stored.
51	04:43	But in reality, many of those credits actually don't represent that full ton of CO2.
52	04:48	In addition to that, many credits are used in inappropriate ways by companies.
53	04:52	For example, a company that would make a net-zero claim, a carbon neutrality claim for a specific product, but with these claims actually only covering 10 or 20 or 50 percent of the total emissions of that company or of the good.
54	05:07	And this ultimately is misleading.
55	05:09	It's misleading to the public, it's misleading to regulators, it's misleading to business partners.
56	05:15	It gives the impression that these companies, this product doesn't have a net-negative impact on the climate, when in reality it certainly does.
57	05:24	DB: So what does it mean when a company says it has neutralized the emissions from its products or activities?
58	05:31	GD: Well, in most cases it means the company has purchased a certain number of carbon credits, but there is a lot of unclarity around the actual quality of those credits, what do they represent as well as the share of total emissions that's really being covered, that's really being compensated through the purchase of these credits.
59	05:51	And this issue of clarity, of transparency.
60	05:55	And so I think that's really something that we need to seriously address right now in the current context of a booming market where there is a lot of interest, a lot of investment in growing it quantitatively.
61	06:09	If we don't address the quality dimension of it, we're going to grow a system in which there's not going to be any trust or that trust is progressively going to erode and ultimately that will destroy the value of the system itself.
62	06:21	DB: Sounds like something called greenwashing.
63	06:23	Can you give us some particularly egregious examples of that kind of activity?
64	06:29	GD: Yeah, I think, you know, carbon-neutral fossil fuels is an obvious one ...
65	06:34	(Laughter and applause) ... that many of you will certainly have had heard of.
66	06:40	I mean, to me, it's just an oxymoron, it makes no sense.
67	06:43	It is flawed conceptually and practically.
68	06:46	At a conceptual level, it gives the impression that we can continue to burn fossil fuels in the way we’ve been doing it for decades -- exactly what has landed us in the crisis we are in today -- and that somehow, magically we can do this without having a net impact on climate.
69	07:03	And that is fundamentally misleading, and it’s damaging.
70	07:06	It is harmful to our collective willingness to adopt the behavioral changes and the costly investments that we need to adopt in order to transition to a safer planet.
71	07:17	LL: While we can agree that cutting greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible is our ultimate goal, the idea of net zero has inspired some pretty vigorous debate.
72	07:27	Here's Professor James Dyke of the University of Exeter with his concerns.
73	07:33	JD: Within just a few years, net zero has become the anchor concept for the world's plans to avoid disaster.
74	07:39	It sounds simple enough.
75	07:40	Its central premise is that the risks of climate change is that there is too much carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere.
76	07:46	So it follows, we must stop emitting more and even remove some of it.
77	07:50	Hopefully by the middle of this century, any residual emissions will be balanced by technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere.
78	07:59	But by introducing carbon removals into climate policies, we have set a trap because it is incredibly seductive to rely on carbon removals in the future instead of rapid decarbonization now.
79	08:11	It gives the impression we are acting, so businesses don't need to change their models and governments don't need to propose bold action.
80	08:20	What this means is that it is now almost inevitable that we will be entering a warmer and more dangerous world.
81	08:28	How did this happen?
82	08:29	How did the idea of net zero become so compromised, so corrupted?
83	08:35	A key moment for the development of net zero was the 2015 Paris Agreement.
84	08:40	The overall objective of this landmark climate treaty was that global warming should be limited to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius to reduce the risks of devastating impacts.
85	08:50	Many scientists, including myself, were very skeptical that this was possible, given the absence of radical proposals.
86	08:58	But there was also a deep sense of responsibility to try to make the Paris Agreement work.
87	09:03	They soon discovered it was impossible to get their models to decarbonize as fast as 1.5 required if one assumed continuous economic growth.
88	09:14	The only way to make the models work was by introducing carbon removal.
89	09:18	More recently, attention has turned to DAC: direct air capture.
90	09:22	This would strip out carbon dioxide molecules directly from the air and then pump them to underground storage sites.
91	09:29	The technology is interesting, but attempts to scale up DAC face two fundamental challenges.
92	09:34	First, the process is extremely energy intensive, requiring significant amounts of electricity and sometimes natural gas to run.
93	09:42	Second, safely storing carbon dioxide is not a trivial enterprise.
94	09:47	It's likely to be the case that every carbon storage site will need to be carefully tailored to the specific geological circumstances at the injection sites.
95	09:57	Now such concerns with carbon removal are sometimes brushed away with the sheer enthusiasm that surrounds these technologies.
96	10:04	The assumption appears to be that large-scale carbon removal will work because it has to work.
97	10:10	Even if we assume these technologies do emerge at scale, it's likely they will be very expensive to run.
98	10:15	Some studies estimate many trillions of US dollars to no evident economic benefit, since it's about clearing up carbon pollution and hiding it underground.
99	10:24	The time has come for us to voice our fears about net zero policies, and that begins by leveling with the public about the Paris Agreement.
100	10:32	At the moment, we are desperately trying to manage the narrative and adjusting models in order to avoid acknowledging that the Paris Agreement is failing.
101	10:41	A 2021 survey conducted by the science journal Nature found that a majority of IPCC climate scientists who responded thought we were heading towards a catastrophic three degrees Celsius of warming.
102	10:54	Only four percent thought limiting to 1.5 was likely.
103	10:57	We can avoid climate catastrophe, but I fear we won't if we don't confront our wishful thinking around net zero.
104	11:05	DB: As you can see, carbon markets are not uniformly delivering what they promise, and many believe they may actually be making things worse.
105	11:14	However, they are potentially a mechanism to provide investment in vital natural solutions and if done differently, could bring significant money to people and places that need it.
106	11:26	Here is Kavita Prakash-Mani of Mandai Nature to talk about ways to ensure that local communities benefit from this growing industry.
107	11:36	Kavita Prakash-Mani: Let me start by saying that a ton of carbon is not just a ton of carbon.
108	11:41	It embodies in it natural protection, community interests and benefits, as well as helping save us from disastrous climate change.
109	11:50	We have a lot of nature-based conservation organizations protecting and restoring our ecosystems, and they are all wondering how they can be part of this carbon market.
110	12:01	Their ability to monetize carbon that they sequester will be crucial for their long-term survival and the impact that we all want.
111	12:09	After all, nature and climate are two sides of the same coin.
112	12:15	However, to get to those opportunities, we need to address some really systemic challenges.
113	12:21	Take, for example, the technical aspects that we have on any carbon credit: additionality, permanence, no leakage, baselining, all very difficult concepts for these small organizations.
114	12:33	Add to that measurement and verification.
115	12:36	How do we get pre-feasibility studies, feasibility studies, project development?
116	12:41	How do these small organizations take on these high costs when the price of carbon is very low to deliver these documentation?
117	12:51	But that's not the problem with the larger players.
118	12:53	And there's a systemic imbalance of power.
119	12:56	Larger NGOs, companies, project developers all have access to international markets and institutional finance.
120	13:04	The smaller organizations see the opportunity but just do not have the means to tap into it.
121	13:10	We should also look one level higher, at governments.
122	13:14	Take, for instance, Indonesia, a country with the highest potential of carbon mitigation from nature-based solutions.
123	13:21	It's the third-largest tropical forest.
124	13:24	It has a coastline with mangroves, and it has 15 to 30 million hectares of peatland.
125	13:30	But the government has restricted any new projects from being developed or carbon credits from being sold to the international market.
126	13:38	This has merit because, after all, developing countries also need to meet their nationally determined contributions, and they do not have to sell cheap credits to developed countries that have already destroyed part of their environment or companies that are not decarbonizing.
127	13:55	However, it does restrict international finance from going into conservation and into communities.
128	14:01	Some countries are trying to get the market to work.
129	14:04	In Asia, that's Vietnam and Cambodia.
130	14:06	But we still do not have the right market mechanisms to ensure that it's equitable, safe and the impact that we want.
131	14:16	DB: As Kavita said, a ton of carbon is not just a ton of carbon.
132	14:20	To build on that, here's Susan Chomba of the World Resources Institute Africa, to talk in more detail about all the things we miss when we think too narrowly about carbon benefits and nothing else.
133	14:34	Susan Chomba: So I'm going to talk to you about all the elements about carbon markets that have got nothing to do with carbon.
134	14:41	Our forests, peatlands and oceans are more than the carbon that they store.
135	14:49	They're the foundation of livelihoods of billions of people who depend on them directly and indirectly.
136	14:59	They provide the hydrological functions that ensure we have rivers, we have lakes and that we can grow food successfully.
137	15:09	They are home to biodiversity.
138	15:12	They are also home to indigenous people who protect them with their blood, sweat and tears.
139	15:21	So when we lose these ecosystems, the livelihoods of local communities and Indigenous people are adversely affected.
140	15:29	When you look at the way we designed the carbon markets, we designed them with various assumptions.
141	15:36	First of all, carbon markets perpetuate the notion that our forests and peatlands are all about carbon.
142	15:46	They overlook the ecosystem services that these ecosystems provide, such as clean water, healthy and nutritious food, biodiversity and its related services such as pollination, pest control and even nitrogen fixation.
143	16:08	Companies are prepared to pay for carbon because it helps them to tick either their compliance box or the public relation boxes.
144	16:17	But rarely do we couple that with the other ecosystem services that these natural ecosystems are providing.
145	16:25	Carbon markets perpetuate the notion that we can continue with our fossil fuel-driven lifestyles and offset our externalities, and perhaps even our guilt, on the poor local communities that are located in the Global South.
146	16:41	In fact, nowadays, if a lot of projects provide a lot of ecosystem services but are not solid on the carbon side, they are often dismissed as poorly designed or poorly governed.
147	16:56	Carbon markets are based on complicated and costly reporting and verification systems.
148	17:04	And these end up taking up most of the revenue that is then coming from carbon.
149	17:10	And local communities get the leftovers if they are lucky.
150	17:15	The value and the price of carbon, compared to alternative land uses such as mining, fossil fuel extraction, has been far too low for far too long.
151	17:28	And so what we are witnessing is governments in the Global South continue to issue permits for mining, for oil exploration, in some of the most critical ecosystems: peatlands, forests.
152	17:44	I work a lot in the Congo Basin.
153	17:46	I see it every day.
154	17:48	LL: So we've heard what isn't working and what existing carbon markets often miss on the ground.
155	17:53	Now let's dive into different ways of thinking that could reshape the system and actually generate the positive outcomes we want.
156	18:01	Here's Gabrielle Walker of Rethinking Removals.
157	18:05	Gabrielle Walker: I think the carbon market is immensely powerful and immensely valuable, and I do think we can use it as a powerful tool for helping to solve the climate crisis.
158	18:15	But I've also started to think that we've been thinking about it the wrong way.
159	18:19	There are three really big and important climate outcomes that the carbon market could help with.
160	18:24	So there’s reducing fossil emissions as fast as possible; there’s protecting natural carbon sinks; and there's removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
161	18:32	Reduction, protection and removal.
162	18:36	And I found that in lots of people's minds, those three get kind of smooshed together in one generic kind of, offset, but it's worth separating them out because those outcomes need different kinds of incentives.
163	18:48	I'll show you what I mean.
164	18:50	If you start with the first one, reducing fossil emissions as fast as possible.
165	18:53	That's reduction credits.
166	18:55	Now, one problem with those is that they don't actually neutralize emissions.
167	18:59	So if I put a ton of CO2 in the air, and I pay you not to put your ton of CO2 in the air, my ton is still there.
168	19:06	It doesn't get you to zero, it doesn't neutralize.
169	19:08	And this is the realm of quite a lot of traditional offsets.
170	19:11	Another issue with them, is they tend to be very cheap, less than 20 dollars a ton.
171	19:15	So it can get immensely tempting just to buy loads of credits and not do the hard work of reducing your own emissions.
172	19:22	And that is not where we should be putting the money.
173	19:25	But where reduction credits can help us is in creating clean infrastructure in places where it wouldn't have happened otherwise.
174	19:32	So if you think about it that way, that's the outcome you're trying to get to, then the incentives to build around reduction credits, the highest-rated reduction credits, will be the ones that drive money towards building clean infrastructure in the Global South.
175	19:48	And the cheapest coal-fired power plant to shut down will be the one in the Global South that was never built in the first place.
176	19:56	OK, so that's the first one.
177	19:57	Second one, protecting natural carbon sinks.
178	20:01	Now, these already exist in the carbon market, like the reduction credits.
179	20:06	And like reduction credits, they don't neutralize emissions.
180	20:09	I put a ton of CO2 in the air, you stop a ton coming out from a sink, my ton's still in the air.
181	20:15	They also tend to get smooshed together.
182	20:17	There isn’t a separate category called protection credits -- yet.
183	20:21	And I think it's worth separating them out because it's hugely important to drive money towards protecting those sinks, rain forests, peatlands.
184	20:31	So then what incentives do you build around?
185	20:33	What are the highest-rated protection credits?
186	20:35	They'd be the ones maybe with the biggest carbon stores, maybe the ones that are most vulnerable, maybe the ones that protect the most biodiversity, maybe the ones that drive the money towards the communities that are actually there husbanding and protecting those stores.
187	20:51	OK, third category, we’ve heard a lot about this, third category: removal credits.
188	20:55	That's taking a ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere and keeping it out.
189	21:00	So unlike the other two categories of credit, removals credits really do neutralize emissions.
190	21:06	If I put a ton of CO2 in the air, I pay you to remove a ton, you get to zero because what goes up does come down.
191	21:14	Those are the only category of credits that can be used to claim net zero.
192	21:20	None of the others can do it.
193	21:22	They do already exist in the carbon market, really tiny percentage of the total.
194	21:27	And we're going to need an awful lot more of them.
195	21:31	So at the moment, every year we're removing durably maybe 100,000 tons of CO2.
196	21:38	And according to the IPCC, carbon removals are now unavoidable to get to net zero by 2050.
197	21:44	And by 2050, we're going to have to be removing billions of tons.
198	21:50	So to get from a 100,000 tons to billions of tons, we're going to have to start really small in this almost nonexistent industry and scale it up to the gigaton scale, affordably, without causing other undesirable side effects and making sure that these removals are real.
199	22:07	And we've got to get the cost down very quickly the way that we did for solar and wind.
200	22:11	So that's the objective, that's the outcome that we're trying to achieve.
201	22:14	DB: So that's a way to reorganize our overall thinking around carbon credits.
202	22:18	But how should companies reshape their thinking?
203	22:21	Here is Derik Broekhoff of the Stockholm Environment Institute.
204	22:27	Derik Broekhoff: Net zero has become the dominant paradigm for climate ambition.
205	22:33	Many countries have announced net-zero targets, and so many companies are doing the same.
206	22:41	Today, I want to challenge the idea that companies should emphasize achieving net zero for themselves rather than focus on how best to contribute to global net zero.
207	22:55	I like the way Carbone 4 frames it: "'A company is not carbon neutral.
208	23:01	It contributes to neutrality."
209	23:05	Let me explain why I believe it's essential to make this distinction.
210	23:10	Current net-zero frameworks presume that companies should imitate, at a corporate level, what must happen globally.
211	23:18	That is, reduce their own emissions as far as possible and balance out the emissions that remain with carbon dioxide removals.
212	23:27	Yet this notion is already leading to a perverse effect on how companies spend their mitigation dollars.
213	23:34	According to at least one study, just a handful of companies have already pledged more removals than the entire world could provide.
214	23:44	At a global level, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be essential for limiting global warming.
215	23:51	As the IPCC, for example, has made abundantly clear.
216	23:56	But having corporate actors purchase removals in bulk to achieve their own mini versions of net zero misses the forest for the trees.
217	24:07	The world desperately needs to reduce emissions.
218	24:11	To move the world towards net zero, companies would do better in the near term to both reduce their own emissions and help others do the same.
219	24:21	First, focus on the big picture.
220	24:24	The idea of achieving net zero at a corporate level is self-centered.
221	24:29	We need to change the narrative from: “We’re no longer part of the problem if we’ve neutralized our emissions,” to “We are part of a global solution to climate change.”
222	24:42	This means not just imitating what needs to happen globally, but instead taking actions that beneficially advance a global net-zero outcome, including by prioritizing emission reductions over removals in the near term.
223	24:58	Second, put equity front and center.
224	25:03	From a scientific perspective, there's no reason why the correct level of emissions for any given actor should be net zero.
225	25:11	What is fair and feasible could be net positive, zero or negative emissions.
226	25:18	Companies should focus on making equitable contributions to global goals, including through near-term support for emission reductions outside their value chains.
227	25:31	Third, connect with larger policy efforts.
228	25:36	No company acting on its own can solve the climate crisis.
229	25:41	We urgently need to focus attention on collective action.
230	25:47	Companies that are truly committed to net zero need to support climate policies at all levels of government and internationally that advance an equitable, comprehensive and coordinated global transition.
231	26:02	LL: We know many people think carbon credits and the idea of net zero are deeply flawed.
232	26:08	But do they have to be?
233	26:10	In our next talk, Annette Nazareth of the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets lays out a set of required core principles to build a market that delivers robust, quantifiable and climate-positive outcomes.
234	26:26	Annette Nazareth: Our starting point for the voluntary carbon market is that it exists to accelerate a just transition to 1.5 degrees.
235	26:37	It is an important complementary tool to mobilize billions of dollars that wouldn't otherwise be available into climate mitigation that wouldn't otherwise happen.
236	26:49	But it will only deliver on that promise if it is rooted in high integrity.
237	26:55	An important thing to know about the voluntary carbon markets is that it is, as its name suggests, voluntary.
238	27:04	It's driven by private sector actors, and it's not regulated by governments or by financial authorities.
239	27:12	But unregulated cannot mean chaotic or opaque.
240	27:19	I spent much of my career as a markets regulator, and I know markets.
241	27:25	And I know that there are some who think that markets are always looking for some new product to hawk.
242	27:31	And today, that product is carbon.
243	27:35	That's why in designing an effective market, we have to start with integrity.
244	27:41	These core carbon principles, which we call CCPs, will address the most critical elements of credit quality.
245	27:51	They include additionality, permanence, robust quantification, validation and verification, no double-counting, transition to net zero emissions and sustainable development impacts and safeguards.
246	28:11	So let me unpack those a bit.
247	28:13	Additionality.
248	28:15	Additionality means that the emission reduction or emission wouldn't have happened without the revenue from carbon credits.
249	28:25	Permanence means that those reductions and removals will stand the test of time.
250	28:32	And if they don't, they will be fully compensated.
251	28:36	An example of that would be a forestry project that issues carbon credits that is then destroyed in a wildfire.
252	28:45	Robust quantification means that the impact of the credits is accurately measured and accounted for conservatively based on solid science.
253	28:57	Validation and verification means that the numbers are genuine and meaningful and are validated and verified by an accredited body that has the integrity to do that job robustly.
254	29:12	No double-counting means that a carbon credit is registered and issued only once, and the emissions reductions and removals that that credit generates will only be claimed by one party.
255	29:26	Meanwhile, our colleagues at the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative, the VCMI, are working on similar standards that will address credible claims so that we can come to a common understanding that carbon credits will only count if they are used as a complementary tool within a legitimate net-zero pathway.
256	29:52	If we have integrity in the supply of credits, how they are traded and how they are used, then a powerful price signal will emerge.
257	30:05	LL: The Dilemma Series was born out of a strong conviction that when reasonable people disagree, the way out is not to dismiss one side over another, but in fact to hold and value different points of view and see what we can generate together.
258	30:19	In dilemma thinking, this is called the resolution zone, and reaching it is vital if we are going to make real progress on climate.
259	30:26	Let's hear again from some leading voices who we invited to share ideas, ask questions and engage in productive debate.
260	30:34	NG: In my inbox, every day, are the debates in the climate community about how exactly we're going to get this done.
261	30:41	And the debates are important because this is the hardest problem that we've ever faced.
262	30:46	And so we have to have open ears, even more open perhaps to our critics than to the ones who agree with us because we have so much to figure out at TTO: I had a good conversation about how, as much as I would like to pretend we're going to get there on climate because of trust and relationships, we've wasted all the time for that so we really need to get there by alignment.
263	31:06	If we can agree to a few things that lead to not dying on a fiery gas ball, I will build my relationships on the way to that.
264	31:13	NK: We heard in the first sessions about how to make sure that the carbon market is working for people on the ground and communities on the ground who didn't do anything to contribute to climate change are going to be often the most vulnerable to bearing the brunt of its impacts.
265	31:27	They're not thinking about the carbon market, we heard that from Susan Chomba from her work in Burundi, and from Kavita Prakash-Mani from her work with smallholders in Southeast Asia.
266	31:35	JF: The thing that shifted my thinking the most was the way that Annette Nazareth talked about what is necessary to create in an integrated and high-integrity carbon market.
267	31:47	That level of clarity I found actually shifted my mind in terms of structuring a market in a valuable way.
268	31:55	DB: There were a lot of kind of, overlapping ideas on how to get to solutions from people who don't really agree on everything.
269	32:02	JD: All carbon removal proposals need to be based on robust science, engineering and economics.
270	32:08	Once we have a credible total amount of carbon that can be removed by proposed technology that includes its capture and safe storage, then and only then can it be included in net-zero policies and models.
271	32:20	GW: So to get from 100,000 tons to billions of tons, we're going to have to start really small in this almost nonexistent industry and scale it up to the gigaton scale affordably without causing other undesirable side effects of making sure that these removals are real.
272	32:36	KPM: On the government side, we need clear guidance and clear regulation.
273	32:40	SC: Good carbon markets must help us to cut emissions from the source.
274	32:46	We have to decarbonize our supply chains.
275	32:49	We have to decarbonize our economies.
276	32:51	We have to decarbonize our lifestyles.
277	32:54	TTO: I think deep listening really matters for conversations like the ones we had today and the ongoing thorniness of people who feel threatened by a planet in decline trying to make decisions.
278	33:04	JF: The heterodoxy of perspective and opinion stimulates new ideas.
279	33:08	And if you start the conversations with respect and with open minds, you get to new places.
280	33:14	And we had that in our breakout group, for sure.
281	33:17	JD: But we need a kind of grounded sense of hope and optimism, which has got kind of rough edges and realism.
282	33:26	Tom Rivett-Carnac: I agree.
283	33:28	JD: And we somehow need to embrace those fears because often we don't want to, right?
284	33:33	TRC: So I think that a stubborn and determined optimism lies on the other side of despair.
285	33:37	I think you have to go through that and you have to stare into the abyss and say: “This is possible, it may even be likely, but you know what?
286	33:44	I'm going to do everything I can at this moment to be the change, to create that difference."
287	33:48	TTO: I've never heard so many polite people disagree about things they hate.
288	33:52	I've never met so many people who hate offsets, who are still super nice and trying to figure out what could be useful about a thing they're not sold on.
289	33:59	DB: It is useful to be reminded to like, be patient, to listen, to learn, to be open, to be warm, to be generous and kind to people who are on my side that I disagree with.
290	34:10	IY: Sometimes we do need to take a step back and not put all that pressure on our own shoulders that we're going to find the solution.
291	34:17	But it’s: How do we generate those connections that together move us forward?
292	34:22	And maybe one day I will be sadder and I will be less optimistic, but someone else will bring that hope to me.
293	34:31	AG: When we try to reason collectively, it's really important and valuable to recognize that different points of view can add to the collective wisdom.
294	34:45	One of the most powerful telescopes in the world had an innovative design when it was built, including the decision to build two virtually identical telescopes only 60 meters apart.
295	34:58	If they're looking at a supernova, 100 million light years away, it turns out that the ability to view that object from two different points of view only 60 meters apart on a small planet makes all the difference in the amount of information that can be collected and processed and used to enhance our understanding.
296	35:24	And the same thing is true when we try to reason together in a group.
297	35:29	If there are different points of view, then the different life experiences of everyone in the group can add to the collective wisdom and make the group far smarter than the smartest individual in that group.

TED Countdown: Is there a role for carbon credits in the transition to a fair, net-zero future?