GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Who Will Foot the Bill? With Mahir Ilgaz
In this episode we talk to Mahir Ilgaz, the Regional Programme Director at Oil Change International, who shares his transformative journey into climate and energy transition advocacy, driven by his experience at COP15 in Copenhagen.
With Mahir we explore the global transition to renewable energy, specifically wind and solar power, and the critical missed opportunities due to the fossil fuel industry's and policymakers' delayed recognition of climate risks. Mahir sheds light on the importance of learning from past efforts to drive future climate action and address the staggering financial damages caused by climate change.
We also dive into the crucial intersection of data-driven action and grassroots activism against fossil fuels and close by highlighting the impactful work of Oil Change International and the critical role NGOs play in advocating for a sustainable future.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Mira Agency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:And this is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Mahir Ilgaz, the Regional Programme Director at Oil Change International. Mahir has been an avid climate and energy transition proponent for nearly 20 years. He started out as an EU policy expert, specialising in energy, climate and environmental policies.
Speaker 3:Mahir has held many different positions over a long career, but not that long. He's still quite youthful, Mahir, I would say, and energy transition advocacy worked for at least the last 10 years at 350.org, a brilliant organisation, and has a diverse set of skills, from campaigning, organizing communications, research, policy analysis, and his current areas of interest include a just energy transition, climate finance and international collaboration versus competition. So, Mahir, thank you so much for taking time to talk to Damla and myself.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation brilliant.
Speaker 3:So, mahir, first of all, we always like to get some of these um brilliant backstory on the podcast. Um. So what was the kind of turning point in your life that led you to become a major advocate for the energy transition, as we call it?
Speaker 4:it's a long story and I doubt we have time enough to for me to recount the entire story, and this was back from when dragons roam the skies and krakens rule the sea.
Speaker 4:So, but back in the day, I used to be working for, uh well, representing the interests of the turkish business community in brussels, and you know we all had a key chapters that we took care of, each of us. I don't know if people remember what those are, but anyway, my key. One of my colleagues went on extended leave and I took over her key chapter, which was, at the time, only environmental policy, didn't have climate, and I was already aware of climate issues, but the more I started reading into it in more detail, the more horrified I became. So I promptly registered my organization as an observer at the UNFCCC, united Nations Framework Commission on Climate Change. I went to Copenhagen for COP15, conference of Parties, the 15th one, and I found myself walking out of the venue with a bunch of activists. I promptly resigned from my post, I started working for Etikradu as a broadcast coordinator, and the rest is history, as they say.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, that COP15 was really a turning point for many people. Steve, remember we did our first big campaign on that COP15?.
Speaker 3:Well, I do you know? I mean, cop15 was really fascinating actually, because it was do you remember the slogan Hopenhagen? It was kind of. They had a whole branding around it and it was one of those classic moments, mahir, where branding and communications and expectations weren't quite aligned.
Speaker 4:Certainly, yeah, yeah expectations weren't quite aligned. Certainly, yeah, yeah, I mean the, the, what I remember, cop 15, where it is not the hopenagel slogan, but, uh, I think it's the preventive arrests. So that's what, what stuck in my mind from cop 15. But you're right, it was a starting point for many activists in my generation. I should say soir.
Speaker 2:You have a huge background in climate campaigns and, at this point of the climate crisis, what do you see when you look back? I mean, what could have been done differently to change the fossil fuel system? And, of course, looking forward, what should be done differently.
Speaker 4:This is a big question. First of all, I see the blood, sweat and tears of a lot of people who worked on this subject for many years and I want to acknowledge all those efforts. I think they're really important. We are far from where we ought to be, where we should have been by now, but, as we say in Turkish, I see there first of a lot of people who put their hands under the stone um, we are aimed at 2.53 degrees celsius of warming by the end of the century, which is catastrophic, but it is nowhere near where we would have been without climate action. And it also shows us that, with climate action, getting a better outcome is actually possible. And you know, we can point out to how that action plays out in real time, to just you know. Last week, I think it's, the BNF numbers came out on power transition trends and we saw that wind and solar accounted for 91% of global power generation capacity installed in 2023. Fossil fuels, by comparison, was around, I think, 6% or something 6 or 7. Obviously, this transition could have started much earlier.
Speaker 4:Right now, I'm reading this very interesting book called Presidents and the Planet Climate. It details just how much US presidents were informed. Called Presidents and the Planet Climate. It details how just how much US presidents were informed about climate science and also climate risks, and we see that that increased starting from mid 1950s, and by 1970s US presidents were getting informed about climate risks on a regular basis. So obviously we also know that fossil fuel industry knew about climate risks by the 70s as well. So that means we could have started much earlier.
Speaker 4:We lost at least two decades and we went into supply side action that is working to stop production of fossil fuels quite late in the day. And I feel these ruminations are not irrelevant. I think they're important from the point of who's going to foot the bill for climate change damages that we are seeing. I think that they're important for lessons for future action. But I think the key thing is looking ahead to find the balance between how much we have lost because we started so late in the day, but also how much we have avoided because we acted when we did. I think our ability to act depends on that balance. We don't want to be complacent, but we also don't want to end up in a situation of debilitating despair, so to speak.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's exactly the balancing act that we all perform, isn't it? And to keep hope, keep optimism, even though we have to be to realize. I've got some great news from today. Actually, today, the British United Kingdom wind energy passed 30 gigawatts, so we now regularly have days where most of the electricity grid in the UK is powered by wind, which is a very, very exciting thing. I know it's exciting in there. That's the transition happening right there. So I've got a question for you. So you've been working with Oil Change International since 2022. And the central mission there is to expose the true cost of fossil fuels and facilitate the ongoing transition to clean energy costs of fossil fuels and facilitate the ongoing transition to clean energy. But I think it'd be really helpful for our listeners if you could paint us a picture of what those costs actually look like.
Speaker 4:Let me give you the recap, the past episodes recap, so to speak. Burning fossil fuels has led to accumulation of heating gases in the atmosphere, primarily CO2, carbon dioxide. This, in turn, has damaged the Earth's ability to regulate incoming and outgoing energy, causing a warming of our climate. Continuing to build fossils will lead to more of that accumulation of heating gases, with even more severe repercussions, which, in effect, is going to make chunks of the planet inhabitable. But everyone knows this by now. They might not accept it, but they know this.
Speaker 4:There are, however, other costs associated with fossil fuel production and consumption, which goes even beyond climate change, and we can see those in real time, be it in İkizköy in Turkey, where coal production is threatening displacement of entire villages, be it in the Okavango Delta in Africa, where oil and gas production plans are threatening entire ecosystems and communities.
Speaker 4:So fossil fuel production by itself, even divorced from its effects on climate change, is an incredibly harmful activity, even divorced from its effects on climate change, is an incredibly harmful activity. A fast, fair, full and funded transition out of fossil fuels thus will not only help us mitigate the risks to our climate and also, you know, help with our quality of life, but it will also help with a plethora of other issues. Some of those are fossil fuel basedbased energy systems are quite expensive. They're price volatile. They create dependencies for countries dependent on fossil fuels for their energy. They create cycles of exploitation for those who are subjected to them, and we can see some of those cycles from Russia's war on Ukraine to I'm sorry, that's my daughter trying to barge into my room.
Speaker 3:We've all had that in the head. Let's give it two minutes break. No, problem.
Speaker 4:Yeah, as I said, we see it in Russia's war on Ukraine to even. We recently released a brief on. We see it in Russia's war on Ukraine. We recently released a brief on some of the fuel supply to Israel which enables it to continue its military action in Gaza. So we are seeing in multiple ways how fossil fuels can be used to enable oppression, just as an example. And this is all, as I said, in addition to the major issue which is climate change. So I would put it as such, these are only some of the costs.
Speaker 3:And just to come back to the start of what you said there, Mahir, which is absolutely critical and I think you know, painting the picture of human cost conflict, the sort of very real economic cost of subsidizing fossil fuels when other sources are more profitable, is really profound. But you said that you felt those costs were quite widely recognized. Now and I worry about that because I'm not sure, certainly in terms of public understanding of the cost of fossil fuels. I'm not sure whether that, if you will excuse the phrase, whether that penny has actually dropped yet with most people. We often gauge climate willingness to take climate action against, whether people are climate sceptics or they believe that human-induced climate change is happening, that human-induced climate change is happening. But what you're talking about there, which is an understanding and awareness of the cost of fossil fuels, I don't know what do you think, Mahir? I think there's a huge number of people who really don't get it yet.
Speaker 4:Oh, I think you're absolutely right. What I meant was people are familiar with the argument, although they might not accept it, and I think we are seeing a new trend of climate skepticism these days, which is not necessarily built around rejecting the argument per se that fossil fuels lead to climate change, but it's more built around, you know, yes, they might, but we will have technologies such as carbon capture and storage, et cetera, other false solutions, as we name them which will help us reduce those side effects. So you know, we will keep on happily producing fossil fuels forever. That's an argument people tend to use these days. That I see, and I definitely agree with you. I think we have not yet come to terms with just how desperately we need to get ourselves off fossil fuels, and very urgently.
Speaker 2:Mahir, that's very interesting because what you said is we have debated this with one or two of our guests in this podcast and we're going to have a science diplomacy session after you with lovely Andrei Polojak. But what I think is there is a more sneaky argument coming in front of us. It's not, as you said, as you put it, rejecting all at once per se, but just giving some more false hope or false direction, and this, I think, is also linked to the notion of post-truth we're living in and the rising emotional responses. So the science, communication, the science behind everything, is kind of rejected in a more this new age, new new age idea. So I think this is also very, very, uh dangerous for all of us and for our future. And in oil change international. You always say that data-driven people-powered. So I will. I was going to ask you actually in the beginning what does that mean? But now I want to ask you is the data driven action enough to make the action people powered?
Speaker 4:That's a very interesting, very important question, I feel.
Speaker 4:Well, I think we have to keep the data coming, relevant facts, especially when the fossil fuel industry is hell-bent on, you know, amplifying their message out there, which rests often on distorted facts.
Speaker 4:So we have some way to counter those arguments, those falsehoods, so to speak. At OCI, we don't create research for research sake, obviously, but we are very outcome-oriented. We are very involved in affecting the outcome. We want to add value to the struggles of people who are fighting against fossil fuels in their regions and we want our research to contribute to that. So providing facts is one way of doing that ceaselessly, but there are also other ways of doing that as well, which is involving people, not only focusing on the data, but making sure that people actually understand the data. We are not producing academic papers, we are producing very accessible pieces. So that's how we're trying to walk that line, I should say. But I think that's a problem not only OCI or not only climate activists, but many others are facing these days, but many others are facing these days, which is just broadcasting facts, might not have the same effect as it would have, say, a few decades ago.
Speaker 3:Absolutely no, it's really. You need those facts, you need that underpinning, you need the evidence base, but so often the challenge is not an information deficit resolution. It's actually a way of actually compelling people emotionally and certainly in terms of, you know, feeling of peer pressure and stuff like that. So it's fascinating territory. I want to talk, however, here about leadership, and the latest briefing that Oil Change International has issued shows that G7 countries, which have both the capacity and the responsibility to be leaders in this space of phasing out fossil fuels, are not actually walking the walk um either at home or abroad. And some g7 countries are massively expanding fossil fuel production at home, while others are investing in more fossil fuel infrastructure aboard. So you mark these as catastrophic failures of leadership in quotes. How can we transform leadership? Do you think and address these failures?
Speaker 4:Well, I think that goes through holding leadership accountable in the first place. I think this is also related to the previous questions you asked on. You know the points you raised about post-truth, how to operate in the age of post-truth, etc. In, say, policy options versus just having the political space to raise those policy options. It often feels these days that we are not making choices as people between policy options, but we are actually increasingly having to make choices on whether we will have the political space to freely choose the policy options we prefer. That's the challenge, I feel, but I think within that we still have to be very careful about the policies that those leaders prefer. We hold them accountable to those policies and that those leaders prefer we hold them accountable to those policies and try to make sure that they abide by their promises.
Speaker 4:This might differ from context to context. I would say it would look very different in a place like the UK than how it would look in a place like Turkey, for example, but I think that's the starting point for, or that should be the starting point for all of us well, this was dark this was dark but true, but as we always say in both steve, actually in both, in this podcast series, but also in uh, our homeland radio show, açık radio uh.
Speaker 2:Pessimism of the intellectect, optimism of the Will. Please do not forget this, okay.
Speaker 3:Graham Shee. Antonio Graham Shee, you've brought him into the room.
Speaker 2:Always, always. I do so, mahir. Another question is transition to clean energy. What we're talking about and what you said was past, just and, of course, fair. So how could a fair, just and faster transition can be achieved? Because we have a lot of crises at the moment, not only the climate crisis, but we have a lot of political tensions. We have a lot of different kinds of tensions around the world, which are always connected to the climate crisis, of course. How can we achieve that?
Speaker 4:Well, I don't think we have time for me to go into the specific policy steps that we need to take, highlighting continuously that just how harmful fossil fuel-based systems are for us and how beneficial it is going to be to transition out of those systems into renewable-based systems. And we are. You know, we did achieve a significant process last year. Obviously it wasn't the progress that we wanted to see, but there was a consensus in UAE, cop28, on transitioning out of oil, gas and coal and within 1.5 degree aligned timeframes. So I think that provides a really good basis for us to work in. And this year in Baku, in COP29, the focus is going to be on how to provide the finance so that everyone can actually start that transition process. So I think those things are going to be key. We do have the public money, we do have the resources to fund this transition. We need the political will, and creating that political will, as I said in response to your earlier question, goes through holding our leaders accountable, and that takes different shapes in different contexts.
Speaker 3:And Mahir. We've got one final question coming up in a second, but I just wanted to trace back to something you raised around things like carbon capture and storage and the idea of the barriers to the transition could well be that kind of roster of solutions that are being put forward. I know in the UK we constantly have people putting forward nuclear, new nuclear power installations as being the solution to our carbon challenge. At huge public costs. Billions of money, of public money, would be required to make that happen, and what's so frustrating is you know that the timeline for those stations coming online would mean we would miss our carbon targets. So I just wonder, before we wrap up, whether you could say anything about those sort of false promises of nuclear or carbon capture and storage and whether they perhaps are standing in the way as well.
Speaker 4:Very astute question again, I would say I personally feel it's something of a trap to get stuck in certain technologies. You know, this is good, this is bad, that sort of thing. I would frame false solutions as anything that delays the phase out of fossil fuels. For us, if a proposed solution leads to continued production and consumption of fossil fuels, then it's not a solution. That would be my framing and within that I think just those things are traps and they lead us to lose more time in terms of climate action. Then we should be focusing on cutting off the supply of fossil fuels and transitioning to clean energy for everyone. And you know we could debate the individual technologies in. I don't know if you have a next episode. That's a couple of hours long.
Speaker 4:We could go into that there, but you know my framing would be if a particular proposed solution leads to a continuation of fossil fuel use, then it's not a solution at all.
Speaker 2:No solution, solutions. That will be the next episode's headline, I think. But, mayur, thank you very much for this really, really wonderful and amazing conversation. But I have one final question for you. Our network is ironically called do not smile, because we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So what object, place or person always makes you smile?
Speaker 4:my kids, uh, as evidenced by earlier in this, in this show, when one of them tried to barge into my office. Uh, they always make me smile and I do what I do mainly for them so you know that damla is a perfect answer.
Speaker 3:You know we're doing doing it for the kids, mahir. That's the, that's the bottom line, isn't it? Well, listen, it's been absolutely brilliant to meet you. I've also, really, and one great thing about doing this podcast with damla is I I get to encounter particularly some ngos that I've not really been as aware enough as I should have been, and oil change international looks fascinating. So I think I'd urge everybody to check out oil change international, your amazing research reports that you're constantly publishing. I think it it's absolutely wonderful. So, damla, would you like to wrap us up?
Speaker 2:Let's do it. So. Thanks everyone who has listened to our Good Guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies.
Speaker 3:And make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people like Mahir about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So see you, damla, and see you Mahir.
Speaker 2:See you.
Speaker 4:Thank you again. The DNS Network.
