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tv   [untitled]    October 18, 2021 9:00am-9:31am AST

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yes, each other, and algeria, she does, and does, she knew as if the endo chinese that managed to beat the french army? why not bang? the decline continues in episode to blood and tears french tea colonization on al jazeera. ah, i'm sammy's a than in doll. how with a look at the headlines here now, jesse are now china's economic growth has slowed slightly more than expected. the world's 2nd largest economy grew by 4.9 percent in the 3rd quarter. but that's a drop of 3 percent from the previous quarter. analysts are blaming a slow down in construction and power shortages. katrina, you has more from bay ging. china has been tightening regulation in
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a number of industries that have traditionally been major drivers of growth here in china. now firstly, you look at these energy cubs truck. china is trying to, aggressively made some of its climate change targets and that resulted in power shortages across the country. it's impacted some major provinces in china. and that's really had been manufacturing and productivity. secondly, we have to look at the construction industry. now this for the past decade has been a rapidly growing not very highly regulated industry here in china. the government has the use identified this industry is one full of risks and over the past year has been clamping down on that and that's affected growth. and of course, is also had this issue of ever grant china largest real estate developer, which over the past few months has been in hot water. it's struggling to manage its $300000000000.00 worth of with a debt. it's really trying not to default on days and the case of the ground has
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really scared a lot of other developers as well as investors. and that's having an impact on g d . p. and we also look at the pandemic. now. china has maintained its 0 tolerance approach, dakota 19. so whether you see these sporadic outbreaks across the country in various cities, china is still reacting with very severe locked downs and that's impacting domestic spending, domestic travel when, when it comes to things that china can't control. however, with the pandemic, we've got these global supply chain problems which is impacting china's exports and higher commodity prices as well. and that's all really led to this lower than expected growth figure place in haiti. say an taurus gang is behind the abduction of foreign christian missionaries and the families. 17 people are being held including 16 us citizens and one canadian they were kidnapped since they left an
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orphanage near the capital. puerto prince on saturday morning from mike hammer, washington, d. c. well, the group is actually from a mission reorganisation based in ohio. the mission has released a statement asking for pres, suppose, abducted as well as the kidnappers, the organization has been operating in haiti for decades. it only broke operations for some 9 months, 2 years ago following an earlier session of gang violence within the haiti. nothing from the state department of part from a brief statement saying that it is monitoring the situation. what we do know is that they were a group of us advisors and recent days in haiti, holding consultations with the haitian national police to find out ways in which they could both the operations. the un, special and voice, a serious as the government and opposition will begin drops the constitution reforms from monday talks over the country's political future been stolen. since
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january theory is 10 years civil war is killed over 3 150000 people and displaced millions in 2018. the government and opposition agreed to form a committee to draft a new constitution. progress has been slow, floods and land slides have killed at least 24 people in india is southern careless, state official say thousands have been evacuated. nellis a 100 belief camps have been set up in zealand. 5 minutes to just enjoy the and says the country's largest said he will remain on the long down for another 2 weeks . oakland has already been locked down for about 2 months as it deals with an outbreak of the highly contagious delta variance. hundreds of salvatore and so protested against the government's decision to adopt bitcoin. his legal tender crypto currency can now be used as a form of payment, fuzzy headlines. the news continues here,
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analysis here after the bottom line. oh i i on steve planning and i have a question, world leaders are talking big about global warming, but is it, can it make any difference? let's get to the bottom line. ah, recently president joe biden said that climate change and its impact on our lives and environment, all right, code read, those are really strong words. the big question is whether countries and companies and ordinary citizens are serious about the response. or they just casual. we see big companies committing to net 0 emissions targets by 2050 and huge reductions by 2030 even airlines and oil companies and banks and their customers. and soon we're leaders will be meeting in glasgow with the us climate change conference to
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assemble new commitments in the fight to manage and slow climate change. but listen, what's real, what's public relations and what's greenwashing, what's working, and what's not. today we're talking to roger marcela, the chief sustainability officer at general electric, one of the biggest corporations in the united states. he's the former general counsel of the environmental protection agency, which is the u. s. governmental agency been enforces the national environmental laws and rachel phrase in the environment and energy correspondence for the hill. great that you're both here with me. i want to show you a little sound clip of president biden. but listen, extreme weather events that we have seen in every part of the world and you all know it and feel it. represent what the secretary general is rightly called code read for humanity. and the science is next. birds are telling us there were fast approaching a point of no return in the literal sense. how do you field it,
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or the president's words flamboyant or the overdone, or do you feel we are getting to something we need to take serious action on? i don't think there's any real debate um we're committed to am innovating technology, making sure we're taking all the steps. we can the be part of the solution to addressing climate change. we feel the sense of urgency. we see the notion need the act. we recognize the need to be credible and this, but ultimately it's going to be innovation is going be technology solves climate change and companies are prioritizing the investments to make sure that they can be part of the solution, deliver the technology the world needs so that we can succeed on the issues that the president as identifying near g is a huge company. you've got medical division, you got like big engines, you've got energy and you are the companies you were just made really recently. chief sustainability officer, and we talked a little bit and said, hey, the 1st thing i gotta do is go measure stuff. how's it going? what is a c a? so do i what, what are you finding as you work within a company as large as general electric?
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that's trying to get serious about this. what are you finding within your own company? you know, we really have 2 fundamental goals when we're talking about sustainability. one is we want to make sure we're being part of the solution that we're contributing, the technology, the world needs to solve these issues. and to we want to make sure we're being consider of our own impacts are we're always improving our impacts to our people, to our communities and to the planet. on the 1st part, being part of the solution. we're 129 year old company. we've always had a larger purpose of looking to improve the quality life for people all around the world. we work in a 170 countries and our businesses are aligned to the 3 most pressing sustainability challenges, the energy transition and climate change. making sure we can deliver precision health care to people everywhere and addressing the future flight so we can keep people connected and more sustainable ways. so we're really passionate, we're really excited about this opportunity to rise to this challenge as we've always done then of this technology. but your point about measuring things we know as we do that we're going to have impacts along the way. we want to be very transparent with those impacts. climate change impacts, environmental impacts, human rights safety, the philanthropy,
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how are lifting our communities. we want to be very transparent, every step along the way we want to show we're constantly improving our impacts. and if we're not, oh is necessarily improving something, we're gonna explain why we're gonna hold ourselves accountable. and we're gonna be transparent and sharing that information. thank you, rachel. you know, one of the things i've been trying to get all of is what deaf con level we really are at as a nation. what are we at as citizens? what are we as companies, the government? and i have to say, i mean just to be honest, that if we weren't fighting about mask wearing, i think we would be fighting over climate politics. and i'm just wondering in jo, you write this fantastic overnight newsletter on, on energy and the environment. what's your sense of it? i mean, are we, you know, in your world taking this challenge seriously? are we tilting towards glasgow and the, and the next un, a climate conference seriously? well, i think that there has been a lot of rhetoric that show was that there at least trying to take it seriously. but i think it all comes down to what they can actually do. like for the by an administration. you know, they have these goals and they put it out there and they trying to get congress to
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sign on to their agenda. but you know, you, congress is very much controlled by a, just a couple of moderate motors right now. a lot, a couple of moderate senators, so it's really how far can you push those to people? you know, that's a lot of light comes down to. it isn't with those 2 people. i mean, part of chris and cinema, you know, from arizona the other show mansion west for west virginia. and look, i've known senators from west virginia for a long time and, and, and west virginia is this state as coal mining state. but it's also a bit of a cliche why haven't we done more to figure out how we take workers in one part of the energy field and give them opportunities in, in, in, in another part of the energy field. well, i feel like one of the big reasons that we haven't done this is that until a few years ago, a lot of people weren't really talking about this. it wasn't at the top of the agenda. and i think that folks now are seeing climate as a job opportunity the way they did before. and i also think that in the previous administration, quite frankly, they didn't seem to care very much about addressing climate change. and i think
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that that unit. hm. even though that the trumpet ministration did. yeah. it, i mean think that i think leaving the paris climate court is, you know, a real underscore ring of the point you're making. roger, let me ask you this. and in one of the reason i was so happy you're here today is i want our viewers to get an understanding of some of the real steps it comes. i mean, it kind of differentiate between fads or, you know, the, the notion you can get a lot of people and say, hey, why don't we just go to renewables and everything. and when you kind of look at the mathematical equation of that, we don't have enough renewable capacity to do that tomorrow. try to give our audience and understanding of what are the big steps we should be thinking about climate change as a global challenge. as a global problem, we need a global solution to solve it. so no one country, no one company. we're in a 170 countries. no one company can solve it, no one country can solve it. so we have to approach it globally. there is no one size fits all solution, the climate change to the energy markets, and that's where kind of bringing in more tailored solutions to understanding how
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can we help countries de carbonized? how can we help utilities di carbonized while making sure at the same time we're providing resilient energy, reliable energy, affordable energy to the billing people in the world who lack access. so we see it in 3 ways. one is, agree with your proposition. you want to grow renewables as quickly as aggressively as you can. there should be no debate about about that. let's that scroll renewables start there, but there's limitations. everybody can agree on that. we would hope so. yeah, yeah we, we hope that's the least controversial part. we'd start there, but there's limits, there's limits in the u. s. there's limits in the you even more palpable limits when you go to other places of the world that we can talk about. but you want us, you wanna move towards a renewable economy, how you, how do you connect that you have to focus on the grid, probably the most understated issue that people talk about on the grid, right? the quality elements of the grid. how do you grid for the are viewers as the grid energy grid? right, exactly. how do you bring renewables online while at the same time, keeping energy resilient, keeping it reliable at the same time and, and something we're struggling with in the u. s. something the you struggling today
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. imagine other parts of the world how hard that is. we're focused on the really hard stuff. we're focused on how to take variable energy from renewable energy, far apart, many distances away, and how do you make it more reliable? so it flows like conventional fossil fuel energy than the 3rd part of the equation is, is the role of natural gas. and this may be the most controversial part for some thinker, some leaders on this. but we think this is very straightforward. the world needs a foundation, it needs a base load of natural gas to provide the foundation to grow renewables, to build that resilient grid. and we know that today natural gas is very efficient, half the emissions of coal. we're looking to address methane at the top end of it, but longer term as you point out, we know that these turbines can be de carbonized long term. we want to take the carbon out of the turbines by using hydrogen as a fuel. something you can actually do today, and also looking at carbon capture and sequestration, taking the carbon out at the back end of the turbines, sequestering it, putting it back in the ground so that we can continue to have the reliable turbines to, to enable the foundation for renewable energy, rachael, one of things i,
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you know, i read your newsletter a lot. i just think part of the politics of this is, there's a built in skepticism that a lot of people have. there may be skepticism if you're in the oil and gas industry, or maybe you're on one part of the political equation. you think anything that's green is bad, you know, for your politics or whatever. and i'm just wondering with the skeptics. i, what are you worried about in these discussions as we tilt towards glasgow? what's real, what's not? i think there's a couple of things up. first thing is a lot of companies are pledging to not have 0 missions, but net 0 nations, which basically means those. so say again, there's not, not 0, but net 0, okay? which means that the sum when you add up all of your emissions and all the things you do to take emissions out of the atmosphere, that number equals 0, right? right. and so one way to do that is through carbon offsetting which is through activities like planting trees in other parts of the world. and there are some skepticism about the extent to which that's effective, the extent to which there is fraud or double counting how long those trees will
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stay there. so i think for those reasons, you know, a lot of folks would say the company should be more focused on reducing their own emissions in reaching near 0 rather than these net 0 pledges if they can get their own emissions down. another thing that we're seeing, they've been a lot of reports lately about companies lobbying against clean energy provisions or big bills like the big infrastructure bill in congress. that would make big transformational investments on climate change because they're lobbying against them. maybe because of the climate provisions, maybe because of other provisions in them. but ultimately even though they are trying to reduce their own emissions, they are, you know, just kind of block in climate action from congress or working to block it. a 3rd thing also is that as some companies try to add renewable energy to their portfolio or take it out of the or take fossil fuels out of their portfolio, they're just buying or selling things that are existing. so if a big fossil fuel company sells off some of their oil assets to a smaller company, they have a greener portfolio, but that oil is still being produced just by somebody else. so a little of slide
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a hand there. the 1st one though, you talked about, i've just, you, i've heard a lot about this and i'm like, well, you know, how are you going to like i, i just know we don't live in a white with a light switch. binary society where tomorrow's totally different. you want to kind of look at it, it's it, you know, i'd much rather get to net 0. you're making trade offs and people come the right direction than not try at all. but, but you know, so thank you. you know, thank you for that. but the, another to the part of this that i've been thinking about, big stakeholders and, you know, sometimes we have a lot of companies i've been spending time with, you know, looking at small eric gulf nations like cutter or the u. e. or others are actually trying to be players in this business to their fossil fuel based issue. but their sovereign, well, funds are investing in renewables. so you know, applause for that. that's great. but on the other side, you know, when you look at our national governments like india or brazil are developing nations that feel like ok, america, and europe already went up the industrial scale. we already put a lot of carbon in the air. now we're trying to restrict them and they feel as if
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that is going to harm their own development. roger, what is our answer there? because i think that the lot of people say, why should we cut back hole if china is continuing to build coal plants? why should we do this unless india is robustly embracing the same kind of climate charge? what i mean, i know this is not your job, but i would love to kind of get you without your g hat looking at the international dimensions of this, of how we get more people aligned. so that you're not just creating greater environmentally responsible provisions in one size, society and escaping them in a different country. your questions, hugely important goes to important theme of equity. how do we do this in a way that's equitable that make sure that people have strong economic opportunities that they have the opportunity be protected from climate change, but also the opportunity to have access to energy, transportation, health care, things like that. steve, i go back to the united nations, united nations developed a set of principles called the sustainable development goals. they're 17 principles
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and they focus on all the same things. we're talking about climate change, environmental protection, but they're, they're wrapped around the steam of equity and equity in a very broad sense, making sure that there's, there's a lack of discrimination that people have access to economic opportunities that people have access to strong health care. the transportation and things like that. i think we have to make sure that these sustainable development goals are at the forefront of the type of policy making and it goes back to the point i made earlier . there is no one size fits all solution. you have to take these themes of renewable energy of a strong, resilient grid of bass load power, including natural gas and some fossil fuels. to make sure you're using that an equitable way that both drives down emissions, but also preserves the opportunities economic opportunities that we see the un supporting in the sustainable development goals. passing. let me ask you an unfair question. i had told you i was going ashes with you just turns out your company is the largest energy provider in france. maybe you're also the biggest energy provider in other countries, but i don't know which those are, but in france,
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you're a very big deal in america. you're a very big deal. you're you, you have systems in us. do you find things in these different states that you think we could learn from each other? the way francis doing are things that we shouldn't learn from france. you know, in terms of how you bring together that provision of energy to the citizens, that and, and companies and what not, that need it in environmentally. a helpful ways is inner design for the future. are there things that america is doing in france could learn? are there things that francis doing that we could learn from? no, our technology provides one 3rd of the world's energy. so we have to know these markets like the back of our hand. we have to understand what we can learn from them and what we want to avoid. we've taken a really deep dive into a number of countries that represent larger macroeconomic situations. and one thing we've learned maybe moving on from your france examples when you look at certain developing economies. ringback the coal is still a player there. cole is still viable, and there's lots of folks who would like to build cold for these countries. so you have to be not, not so much a policy issue in the us, not a policy issue in france,
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coal as an alternative, but we are working many places in the world, calls on all the alternative. it may be the preference. so how are we learning examples from these other places that we can reduce their emissions, grow renewables, but at the same time avoid the temptation the, the go, the easy route and use coal and create other types of relationships and things like that. so this micro type approach is, is really key. this is probably one of the things i might bicker with in terms of some of the policy we're seeing is gonna sound like a broken record. there is no one size fits all solution. we have to understand these issues on a country by country level. we all have the same goals we want to get to the same place, but how you use technology and how you support these technologies is all very dependent on those local circumstances. and we need to invest more energy in understanding that rachel is you, right? i, i, i know that you are hit by lots of entrepreneurs, small company, say, hey, look at us, we're contributing, you know, i look at this, the sort of, you know, trap of looking at little boutiques that may have things that scale. i just be interested in your, your map as you look at what's happening out there, you know,
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in the churn of creativity of folks, you know, you know, the department of energy has a group called aarp e that's helping, ah, smaller firms get through their financing challenges to try to put new ideas on the table, is there anything that pops for you that we know our viewers should should look at on a whether whether they should be optimistic about or should, should we be cynical in pessimistic about reaching these goals? i think it's too soon to say, i think that it's possible or, you know, the un i p c. c report the report where people were saying this is a code red for humanity. i mean, look, it says that we will have 1.5 degrees warming. i had of industrial levels at some point in this century, 2.5 degrees celsius. so basically we're going to be a little bit hotter than we were before. we started massive scale using energy the way that we do now. and we're going to reach an important threshold, but we can bend the curve back around and cool down a little bit lower that you're 2100. we're not there. if the world can get to net 0
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around the middle of the century, so in 2050 or in the 2015 we, i just want to put an underscore in this because what you're saying, amerisys journals, ice, you know, i trust science as a journalist that journal called science, it says, a child born today is going to have 5 times the level of natural disasters in his or her life than a child born a 150 years ago. so that's a measurable difference in the violent, whether phenomena or other dimensions of natural disasters. or i guess it could be, you know, climate broadly droughts, you know, you know, in that arena. so that to me, sounds similar, but i also know that this is a time where if galileo were alive today, he'd probably still be found guilty. so you know, it's this tension between awareness and science and consciousness. and i'm interested, roger and how, you know, even within your company, your company's huge, how many employees do you have? 174874000 people. i mean,
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so when you build awareness, when you kind of get people to sort of talked about, do you find the awareness levels even among your employees or the communities you're serving, that there is a sense of tension and a sense of purpose and need in this area, so i'm going to be the optimist if i can i go to speak for i think the sense of purpose we feel as a company. there is a lot of debate. there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of unknowns around climate paul, see what countries are going to do. there's a lot of off of the msm, a lot of passion about the role of companies doing this. regardless that we've made these commitments. our competitors have made these commitments, our broader our suppliers, our customers, we've, we've all made these commitments and the notion of using innovation and technology policy would be great. there's ways policy can help. we help policy doesn't get in the way. but, but we've committed to do this and i, i, knowing our employees, knowing our engineers, knowing our scientists, we feel passionately optimistic about the role we have to play and, and knowing. regardless, we're on a path to figure this out. we can't tell you exactly how to get there. we have
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engineers right now. if i could take you through our lab, i'd love to do that. they're working on technologies that maybe 101215 years from now. we may or may not use, but they know we have to be thinking that far ahead. we have to be looking around the corner, experimenting the day for where we need to be in 2035, with the hopes that we're going to be taking things to the next level. but making progress in the mean to me in your god, in realistically, can we do carbon sequestration or carbon capture at scale? yes i, i'm, i feel optimistic. we're going to get there to the scale. the technology is, you know, in various stages we have to, it's not so much about just how do you capture it from the back of a turbine or from the back of, of a industrial facility. how do you transport it? how do you sequester it? what's the safest way to do? so, is there some use for it along the way? one of the concepts steamy this to will just interrupt me, but a lot of my environmental friends who used to be very pro, a carbon capture carbon seaquest ration or not. so pro, now, is there something messy or complicated about it? i think there's a, there's a notion that if you,
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if you have carbon captures that perpetuates fossil fuels, i think maybe that's, i don't think there's so much a concern about the actual technology is the notion that it makes it easier for coal and maybe natural gas for some folks who aren't in favor of that, but that, that concept that's really optimistic right now. something called carbon hubs. the notion that you're going to have hubs in geologically attractive areas that you can do carbon capture from power plants from industrial facilities during they are capture pulling harbor now the air and finding good industrial clusters to be able to do this all in the same place. in a way that kind of geologically makes sense. so that's where this is going to the next level and really amazing people, focused on this technique. what is the next coolest technology you can tell us about? that's beyond that. i think the 2 things we think are, are super calls is it's not climate changes, but sustainability is health care. and half the world's population lacks access to health care. this is a huge, equitable issue. the way we can make health care more accessible, more portable, more reachable for more people use artificial intelligence to get diagnosed the sooner. and that's just amazing to think how technology can help people all around
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the world who are under served for health care. and then the other part that's, that's really exciting and interesting is, is aviation. you can imagine from an engineering perspective, aviation presents its own challenges that you know, safety trumps everything there. and probably not as far along in terms of some of the energy sectors in terms of having some of those clear cut technologies. so we're, we're, we're super passionate to be thinking about the next generation of air travel, keeping people connected, doing in a more sustainable way. thank you that you know, back on the climate side racial, you know, as you look at what's going to happen at the beginning of october, november, what are the fault lines right now as you look at it, does it, i mean i, i honestly look, it is a very, very important meeting, but if you were to take the temperature in the u. s. media right now, it doesn't pop very high. so is it gonna be a pretty boring and drawl a vent or do you think we will wake up and say, wow, ah, something big it's been achieved? how are you gaming it out? i mean, i guess it depends. i don't have a crystal ball. i can't tell you what they are or aren't gonna negotiate. i,
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what i can say is that i feel like the, a lot of countries have put forward commitment in recent months. like the u. s. has said basically that we're gonna cut our emissions in half by the end of the decade and compared to i believe it's 2005 levels. i'm so i mean that is cutting our emissions and half is not a small fee and a lot of other countries have made pledges. but there are also some hold outs, like other countries say they're going to continue to jar, trying to flash their emissions by 2030 china is trying to increase their emissions . they are saying they're going to peak and then come down to net 02060 right? oh, you know they are they, i mean don't get me wrong to is taking some steps there, restricting their coal. they, i think of stuff are going to stop financing overseas. call there was an announcement about that recently, but you know, there are still some hold out so so paris climate accords almost fell apart. the great story of president obama cornering you know, india and china and think gut feeling. do you think we're going to get a deal and glasgow to, to proceed go on. i think there will be a deal. i don't know how good or bad that deal is going to be, and i feel like
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a lot of countries might say, well look, we've already up to our commitments. i don't know how much more we can up our commitments. but i think that will be a deal will roger marcela chief sustainability officer at general electric and rachel phrase and energy and environment correspond for the hill. thanks so much for being with us today. thank you, steve. thanks for have enough. so what's the bottom line? can we stall and reverse the cooking of our world? can we slow the obvious impacts of shifts and climate which are scientifically linked to the carbon that you and i and all of us are releasing into the atmosphere? will electric vehicles replace diesel and gas cars and trucks? will coal disappear even in china? the heart reality is that fossil fuels be with us for a long time, and renewable energy is getting there, but slowly, it's not a light switch. and what we heard today from my guess is that there are real options and there are fake ones until there's a global consensus that this is a code red moment in our existence. it means we'll be pretty casual about all of this. and that means ineffective. and that means earth will keep cooking until
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we're serious. and that's the bottom line ah compelling. we keeping our distance because it's actually quite dangerous. ambulances continue to arrive at the explosion. inspire. i still don't feel like i actually know enough about what living under fascism was like. unequal to broadcasting, some nelson have been on august night, he was born. happy al jazeera english proud recipient of the new york festivals broadcaster of the year award for the 5th year running on air or online be part of the debate or pacific people. the ocean is our identity and the source of well being. we are the ocean. when no topic is off the table,
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it's as children side atmosphere, people are demoralized, they're exhausted and many health care workers are experiencing p t s d like symptoms jump into the stream, and ju, he not global community. okay, on right on you to right now, you can be part of those conversations. wealth this stream on out is era. ah, i'm sammy's a van with a look at the headlines here now to sierra now, china's economic growth is slowed slightly more than expected. the economy grew by 4.9 percent in the 3rd quarter of this year. that so drop of 3 percent from the previous quarter. experts blame a slow down in construction power shortages and floods. katrina, you has more from bay jing and one.

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