borisjohnson is boris johnson is raising borisjohnson is raising questions about whether he tried to turn down an independent report that said priti patel broke the ministerial code by bullying staff. an online summit of the worlds biggest economies is under way in saudi arabia. top of the agenda, the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout. an alternative to a coded vaccine for people without functioning immune systems is entering its final stage of trials. —— a covid—19 vaccine. a rocket attack on the afghan capital kabul,... now on bbc news, the bbc‘s environment correspondent justin rowlatt chairs a remote debate asking why is it proving so difficult to stop climate change and the destruction of the natural world?

this is the bbc world service, i'm justin rowlatt, and you are watching world questions — the programme which puts the public right at the heart of the debate. and on this edition, we are discussing how we can protect the environment. with me is a panel of world—leading scientists, academics, activists, and business people. the questions, as always, will come from members of the public from around the world. and there is so much for us all to discuss. what sort of energy policy should we be pursuing? are there lessons to be learned from the coronavirus pandemic? and, of course, what can we do on a personal level to help protect the planet? let me introduce our panel. i'm joined by professor sir bob watson, a leading climatologist. bob is the former chairman

of the un's intergovernmental panel on climate change. hejoins us from the us capital, washington, dc. from the european parliament in brussels, we are joined by ska keller. ska is a german mep from the green party and co—leader of the green's european free alliance. from kenya, i'm joined by elizabeth wathuti. elizabeth is an environmental campaigner and activist, and founder of the green generation initiative, which encourages young people to be environmentally conscious. professor sir partha dasgupta — a renowned economist at cambridge university who is apparently leading a review for the british treasury into the economics of biodiversity. partha joins us from cambridge in the uk. and here in london, i'm joined by the entrepreneur and green energy consultant michael liebreich. welcome to you all. and now, to ourfirst question of the day.

it's hans from the usa — hans is a biochemical engineer, i think that's right, isn't it? what question do you have for our panel, hans? my question is, the ipcc says that we must reduce the use of coal to 2% or less of current levels by 2035. they say this cannot be accomplished without nuclear energy. new technology nuclear reactors recycle fuel and eliminate waste. plus, they cannot melt down. the cost problem is solved by a mass production of standard designs. france and ontario, canada have shown how reduced nuclear can reduce fossil fuel use dramatically. yet all the attention is put on impractical renewables, which have not lived up to expectation in countries like germany. so my question is, why does the science of nuclear power continue to be denied in favour of magical thinking about renewable energies? an interesting question, hans.

i'll put that first to michael. i also want to add in the question about countries like germany which choose to shut down existing nuclear plants that are currently running and have, in some cases, many years left to run. what do you say to the decision to shut down those plants? so first of all, working nuclear that is producing large amounts of clean electricity at a very low marginal cost in a country like germany with very good regulation, a very strong whistle— blowing culture, strong safety records — frankly it's a crime against the climate to shut those things down and keep coal running, as germany has done. and there is analysis on how many people have died from the air quality impact of that appalling and foolish decision. then it comes to the question of building new nuclear power stations. but the problem with the current generation of nuclear is that

it's very expensive — i'm talking about 3—4 times as expensive as now the lowest cost wind and solar. and hans' question contains a lot of hidden landmines, like impractical renewables and magical thinking, and so on. this is nonsense, frankly. these are criticisms you could have held against renewables ten years ago. but now the lowest—cost electricity in the world and the history of the planet comes from unsubsidized wind and solar, which now accounts for about 11% of global electricity. finally, to your point about the next generation of nuclear, the small modular reactors that can't melt down and can maybe be produced at a very low cost through serious production. my view is bring it, let's see them, but not one of them will be built before 2030.

so we should certainly put some money into those new nuclear technologies, but not rely on them, and certainly not rely on them for the next decade. ok, i'll go to ska next for obvious reasons. it's very unusual to accuse a senior green politician like yourself of a crime against the climate — but that is what michael is saying german greens have done by encouraging the government to shut down functioning nuclear plants with many years left in their life. what do you say to that claim of a crime against the climate, and what do you say about the future of nuclear? well, we're very proud that we were a factor in shutting down the nuclear power plants that we have in germany. because they are a huge risk. nuclear energy is by no means safe, it's also not climate—neutral — you have to dig up the uranium. and the big question is, what do you do with them afterwards?

we decided to shut them down in germany. we have nowhere solved the issue about the waste. there's huge outcries now of where will we put the waste? we will have to put the waste somewhere for millions of years. but of course, it's true that the coal power plants shouldn't continue. that is absolutely right. coal is extremely inefficient and we just shouldn't have it — that's why we are pushing for them to close down. and the other problem is also that, if you have nuclear power, it's a very centralised form of power, right? so if there's one problem with one nuclear plant, you have to turn off and it's inconvenient for many people. whereas with renewables, you can make sure it is decentralised, that you also put the power of creation into the hands of the people. you can have a wind power plant in a village, for example, and you can make sure that people benefit from the solar power being produced. so all of those are immense benefits of renewable energies. so from my point of view, this is exactly where we should go.

hans, what do you say to ska's defence of her party's closing down those nuclear power stations, and her denial that nuclear power should be part of the climate solution? well, i would say that nuclear power is the safest form of energy. it doesn't pollute the air, and we now know that things like nuclear waste are not nearly as harmful as they've been portrayed to be, and that they are easy to store. i live 15 miles from a nuclear storage site, and it's not a big deal. it's very safe, and i'm not the least bit concerned. 0k, hans, thank you very much indeed. a very robust defence of nuclear powerfrom hans in the usa, a biochemical engineer. next, we go down the american continent to brazil, to regina. she is an architect and gardener. thanks so much forjoining us. do you want to give us your question? yes. i believe the whole world is one family. and we all have to make a sacrifice to save the planet.

do you believe humans are able? or are they just selfish? bob watson in washington, dc. you've worked for the un for many years, what do you say to regina? do you think human beings are willing to make the sacrifice, or are we just too selfish? i think some humans are willing to make the sacrifice in the good of all. but i believe most humans are not. same as most governments, most private sectors, and most individuals are self—centred. they're interested in themselves. however, i also believe we can produce the energy we need in a clean way. i'm actually optimistic we could produce the food we need in a clean way. i believe a combination of good technologies and good policies can get us there.

professor, if people are selfish, how on earth do we make them join in with this international effort to reduce greenhouse gases? it is true that if we were somehow magically able to price nature, in the sense that we have to personally pay it if we encroach upon it, then it doesn't matter how selfish you are — your self—interest will guide you in the right direction. that's for sure. but the problem is, who sets the price? we are essentially a small group of people, involved not with 7.8 billion people in mind. we may say on sundays that we are part of one global community, but on monday through saturday, we don't believe it. so organising, getting together, and recognising that the gains and losses will not be equal across people when we face up

to the demands we make on the biosphere and its goods and services, is a hugely difficult problem. now we have solved in some sense, we have faced up to it, at the level of communities, possibly, in some parts of our activities, at the level of the nation. and at the international level, we have been successful, but on coordination problems, like having a system of weights, a common system of time — these are extremely important problems to solve, but we seem to have managed it very well. but that's because nobody really lost. arguably people gained. people gained. i want to go to elizabeth in kenya, an environmental campaigner. this is a key question — are people too selfish to take the kind of actions necessary? you work with children and people in communities around kenya — what do you say to that question? are people too selfish? i would say that people have not remembered their connection with nature.

because when you connect to nature, you get to love nature and appreciate nature, and also be on the forefront to conserve nature. and right now, the world needs to invest in nature's ability to address the impacts of the climate crisis. i grew up loving nature, and i would say that my passion for the environment and my push for activism is greatly connected to how i got to connect to nature at a young age. because i got to understand nature, learn from nature and, in the process, feel the pain of nature due to environmental degradation. so if this is the same path that we can take for ourselves, our young people to make sure that people are loving nature in getting connected to the natural world, then activism and conservation will be a call to action that you don't need anyone to tell you what needs to be done. you can see it and feel it, because you are connected to the natural world. ska keller, leader of the green alliance in the european parliament, what do you say to this question? i very much agree with elizabeth, and i think what she also says

is that maybe we shouldn't talk about sacrifice. because in the end, we can gain a lot. we can gain an environment in which it is good to live — i mean, no one wants to live amongst storms and all these nature catastrophes. it is not a sacrifice to have a green environment, a healthy environment. those are all gains that we have from having a better environmental policy, from having societies that work better together with the environment. ska, thank you very much. michael, coming to you — you are an entrepreneur, but i think there is a very interesting thing that ska was implying there, which is that we often talk about the costs of tackling climate change — we rarely talk about the costs of not tackling climate change. do you want to pick on that, this issue of people being too selfish to deal with the problem? i think regina's question is a fantastic one, because it goes to the heart of the problem.

now you can say, "well, so many of the solutions are actually personally beneficial." so clean energy is just cheaper than not—clean energy. energy efficiency saves you on your utility bills. so it's a fabulous thing. so i think a large part of the solution looks like that, and we don't need to frame it as a need to sacrifice. what we actually have is a need for investment, because those things require investment, but they deliver personal benefits. regina in rio, what do you say to those answers? i think that the general conception about the human behaviour is individual character. but the pandemic has shown that humans have prepared to make sacrifices for love. regina, thank you very much. let's go now to haiti and tojuneau — what is your question?

we know about our population. some countries such as haiti — a lot of people are cutting trees to build houses. they are cutting trees to have food. i think if we could control the population of the country, something could be better. what can we do to control the population? now you have hit, juneau, upon absolutely essential dilemma in all environmental issues. so what he was saying was, one of the key issues here is the population — people in haiti needs to make it need to chop trees to build their homes, to have fires in order to cook. and the more people there are, the more trees they'll chop down, the more effect they'll have on the environment. so reducing the population is the best cure for the planetary ills that we are trying to tackle.

bob watson in washington, dc — as the former chair of the ipcc trying to bring the nations of the world together, do you say in your panel discussions, "listen, guys, we've got to keep the world population under control?" yes, the two key issues we have to worry about is the number of people and what is consumed. the more people you have, the more demand for food, water, energy, fibre, etc. so the challenge is, how do we bring fertility rates down so we can be much more sustainable? 0ne — education of girls, absolutely essential. second, empowerment of women — for women to have access to socially acceptable forms of contraception. if girls are educated, women are empowered, we've seen throughout the world that fertility rates go down. and that is indeed crucial. so i always argue, and the panels i'm on argue, we have to look at consumption —

and part of consumption is the population issue. but i want to make a point that consumption in the developed world, the industrial world is so much higher, the demand per capita for food, energy and water is much higher in europe and in america than it is in many poor, developing countries. so i don't want tojust blame developing countries with high population growth. we need to challenge, to reduce fertility rates and get to grips with unsustainable consumption in industrialised countries. bob watson in washington, dc, thanks very much indeed. let's go now to the european parliament in brussels with ska keller, german mep. ska, what do you say? population clearly is a factor in controlling damage to the environment. what do the german greens suggest needs to be done? i do want to question that

population is a major factor here. i very much agree with what bob said later on that consumption is the key. if we look at the population in belgium or in germany, there's so much consumption happening. in hong kong, you have a lot of people, but nobody is probably, excuse me, cutting down trees. it's a matter of poverty rather than of the number of people there. of course, what we need to do is enable and empower every woman to decide about her own body and to control her own family size, and whatever. so that is absolutely important, it is important for democracy and human rights. but it is not important in a sense of, "oh my god, we need to control how many people are living in far—away countries." because usually when that debate is happening, it's happening about other countries. and i don't think that is a very good debate to have. so indeed, we need to look at the resources we have and how we distribute them equally and fairly, how do we make sure that no one has to live in poverty? how do we make sure that every woman

can control the size of her family? i think those are the key questions. thank you very much. professor, we keep coming back to economics and all of this, don't we? so we hear there that perhaps consumption is more important than population. where do you stand on this? because one of the interesting things about population is the forecasts that were made even as recently as a decade ago for world population growth, they've proved to be much less aggressive than everybody else expected, the population is growing much less rapidly than people thought, and we may peak much earlier and the population may decline more quickly than people may thought. are you optimistic about population, or do you buy this claim that population is one of the key drivers of environmental damage? well, of course it is a key driver, because it is one of the factors. so is per capita demand. the total demand is a product of the population size

and the per capita demand. so we could have a trade off there. the question is, are we willing to make that trade off? you give me a population number, and i'll be able to effectively compute the per capita demand that can be made on a sustainable basis. because ecologists have data on that, as to how much it can take. so that's not an issue. it's a trade—off. the question is, are we willing to make that trade off? and what should be absolutely clear — because there's a lot of misunderstanding about this — that the world's poorest countries, which have some of the highest fertility rates, have no responsibility whatsoever for the environmental problems we face globally. because they are pitifully poor. the worry that we have about the poorest countries, about their population growth or their fertility rates is about their future, not about what they've done to earth's system. very interesting indeed, and there's a correlation between rising income

and falling population. so arguably, enriching these poor countries may well lead to the consequence of a much slower population growth. thank you very much indeed, juneau in port—au—prince, thank you very much for that interesting question. we now come to our very last question, and we have three schoolgirls from spain. there's a wonderful story behind this — they were set the challenge of finding a question for this world questions by their teacher. and naturally enough, we're going to the winners. the question comes from daniela in zaragoza, she isjoined by herfellow pupils candela and laura. do you want to give us your question? what should we all do to improve our habits and help save the planet? where should we go first? i'll come to you, michael. what bad habits should we improve on in order to save the planet? efficiency and waste. we need to bear down on that.

we can all do that, because i think there's a little comfortable consensus here that consumption is the problem. consumption is not the problem. consumption that is wasteful is the problem. so i think there's a lot of things we can do, people complain mightily about the climate, then they'll live in a house that is poorly insulated. and instead of insulating it, they'll spend their money on some luxuries. so we've all got the responsibility to do the right thing through being efficient in our choices. ska keller, german mep from the green party in brussels. what are your habits that you should improve on in order to save the planet? normally i would say travel less, but the pandemic has solved that issue for me — in a not so nice way, obviously. i do think everyone can do something about it, and there's all sorts of different factors playing in. but while it is really good to look

at what you're doing individually, we must also recognise that there is a systemic problem. individually, we're not responsible for the global plastic industry, for example. it's something we can do ourselves to reduce, but that won't change the logic of the underpricing of environmentally very harmful goods. so again, let's do everything we can individually, but also be aware that we need to change something. in the end, it's politics, and that's our responsibility to engage politically, as we have seen with the global climate movement that's been so effective and amazing. so we need to have that political pressure, as well, to change something in the system. ska keller in brussels, thank you very much indeed. i'm going to go to you next, bob watson in washington, dc. as a former chair of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the un's effort to bring together the countries of the world to deal with environmental problems, what are the bad habits

that we should all get rid of in order to help solve environmental issues? the first and most important thing is to vote. vote for politicians that actually care about the future, care about the environment. choose sustainable products. send a signal to the private sector — "we care about sustainability." so, we as individuals can play a major role of stimulating change in government and in the private sector. and by working with our friends and ourfamily, we can have collective action as well. bob watson, thank you very much indeed. professor sir pa rtha dasgupta in cambridge, you're an economist. what bad habits have you got that you should change in order to help tackle environmental problems? well, an uncountable number, of course, but i quite agree with the previous two speakers. but there is one thing, since i'm an economist, something young people could do — and i hope they would —

which is to agitate in their communities, via their communities, to the parliament, to their government, national government, to introduce nature in the economic models they use for forecasting, for policymaking. professor sir pa rtha dasgupta, thank you very much indeed. and i've saved you, elizabeth wathuti in kenya, till last because you're an environmental campaigner. you're agitating and trying to get change all the time. yeah, that great question reminds me that it is the small acts multiplied by millions of people that get to make a difference in the world. and as young people, one of the things that i always insist is "use your voice". because to change this planet and to have a liveable world and a safe future, we need to make our voices heard. and then, of course, be informed. because when you're informed about everything that is happening to the world, how everything is changing — for example, how the world's forests are being destroyed or being burned

down — then this is something that gives us that anger to also want to do something about what is happening to the world today, because, of course, we do not want to let our future get down to the drain. we want a kind of a world where the future generations do not have to suffer the consequence of the actions or positions of the current generation. elizabeth wathuti in kenya, an environmental activist, thank you very much indeed. from zaragoza in spain, our final questioners, thank you very much. and that is all we have time for from this special edition of world questions. all that remains is to thank our wonderful panel, to thank our questioners and, of course, to thank you, the audience, for watching at home. goodbye.

0utbreaks outbreaks of rain continuing to move slowly further south through the rest of the day and into tonight. strong winds across the far north of scotland, quite chilly in the wind because colder air is following the weather front. some because colder air is following the weatherfront. some gusts because colder air is following the weather front. some gusts around the northern isles, 60—70 mph, slowly easing through tomorrow. showers coming into northern and western scotla nd coming into northern and western scotland tonight, wintry on the high hills, the chance of hail and thunder, a ba shower in northern ireland towards the north and west. by ireland towards the north and west. by the end of the night, the cloud

and patchy rain across southern england. a chilly night, a touch of frost in eastern scotland, the eastern side of northern ireland. for most of us, more chilly. sunny spells tomorrow, still a lingering weather front close to southern england and south wales, the chance of patchy rain. some showers in north—west england and northern ireland, especially into the north and west of scotland, but the wind will be a bit lighter tomorrow. a more chilly day for many tomorrow, particularly in england and wales. again some sunny spells for many of us. again some sunny spells for many of us. sunday evening, the patchy rain may start to feed further north into parts of england and wales, a few showers into western scotland still, but for many of us it will turn dry as monday begins. a ridge of high pressure building in. clear spells overnight, the chance of a touch of frost. the next weather front not far away. some cloud in southern england and south wales, if you spots of rain early on monday, but

then the next weather system comes in and improves things, some patchy rainfor in and improves things, some patchy rain for wales and west in england. the wind will pick up again, average speed through the day for the western isles of scotland could be towards 60 mph. somewhat more mild on monday, especially into parts of england, scotland and northern ireland, despite the fact we will see some rain. it will push further south into england and wales on wednesday, and to round off the week, for many of us it is looking dry and a bit cooler.

this is bbc news. the headlines at five: borisjohnson is facing questions about whether he tried to tone down an independent report which said home secretary priti patel broke the ministerial code by bullying staff. none of us want to see bullying or poor practices within the workplace, and the home secretary has been clear that she would never want to do that intentionally. an online summit of the world's biggest economies is under way in saudi arabia, with a call from the country's king for coronavirus vaccines to be made available to everyone. an alternative to a covid vaccine — for people with weakened immune systems — is entering its final stage of trials. and in half an hour, as coronavirus swept