The Economics of Climate Change Explained Ft. Dimitri Zenghelis

In this powerful episode of Resiliency The Podcast, Jenn Quader and Dr. Kelly Culver sit down with globally respected economist Dimitri Zengelis to explore the intersection of climate change, economics, innovation, and resilience.

From the realities of the global energy transition to the psychology behind resistance to change, Dimitri breaks down why the shift to a clean economy is not just necessary—but already underway.

🔑 Key Topics Discussed

• Why the clean energy transition is inevitable—and already happening faster than expected
• The role of inclusion and trust in solving global challenges
• How politics and tribal thinking are slowing progress
• The real reason people resist climate action: “What’s in it for me?”
• Why renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels
• The global race for dominance in AI, energy, and innovation
• What businesses must do to future-proof their assets and workforce
• The connection between resilience, leadership, and long-term thinking

This conversation reframes climate change from a distant, moral issue into a present-day economic opportunity. Dimitri makes it clear:

• The future economy will be powered by renewables, AI, and innovation
• Countries and companies that fail to adapt will fall behind
• True resilience requires planning ahead—even when it’s uncomfortable

Resilience isn’t just about surviving change—it’s about anticipating it, preparing for it, and leading through it.

🎧 Resiliency The Podcast is a global conversation redefining resilience through real stories, hard-earned wisdom, and honest dialogue.

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🔗 Connect with Dimitri Zenghelis
 LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/dimitri-zenghelis-2a378517
 Website: https://independent-economics.com/

 

🔗 Connect with Jenn Quader: 

- Jenn Quader’s Website: http://jennquader.com

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- Jenn Quader’s Tedx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yKMeo3GW2k

- The Smart Agency Website: https://thesmartagency.com/

 

🔗 Connect with Dr. Kelly Culver: 

- Culver Group Website: https://new.culvergroup.ca/

- Dr. Kelly Culver’s Website: http://drkellyculver.com

 - Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-culver/

- Dr. Kelly Culver’s Tedx Talk: https://youtu.be/0FNU95LH-f8?si=8uamb7cs7RiUWxRV

 

Hosted by: Dr. Kelly Culver & Jenn Quader 📍

Executive Producer: Asef Quader 

🎧 Produced by: ALL Inc. & The Culver Group © All rights reserved 

 

DISCLAIMER: THE OPINIONS OR VIEWS EXPRESSED DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT OR REPRESENT THOSE OF THE HOSTS OR RESILIENCY THE PODCAST; SUCH VIEWS ARE MERELY OPINIONS EXPRESSED. THE INFORMATION IN THIS EPISODE IS FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY AND GENERAL INFORMATION PURPOSES. RESILIENCY THE PODCAST CANNOT GUARANTEE THE ACCURACY OF ANY STATEMENTS FROM GUESTS OR THE SUFFICIENCY OF THE INFORMATION. 

Chapter List:

00:00 – Climate Change Economics & Global Energy Transition (Dimitri Zengelis Intro)

01:44 – What Is Resilience? Adapting to Economic Shocks & Global Uncertainty

03:17 – How to Stay Resilient During Crisis (Mindset, Control & Empowerment)

05:39 – Why People Resist Climate Change Solutions (Inclusion, Trust & Public Perception)

09:34 – Political Polarization, Tribalism & Climate Policy Challenges

10:58 – Renewable Energy Boom: Why Clean Energy Is Replacing Fossil Fuels

15:58 – AI Energy Demand, Data Centers & The Future of Electricity Systems

20:53 – The Great Energy Transition: Climate Innovation & Economic Transformation

21:23 – Climate Change Solutions for Everyday People (Affordability & Access)

25:10 – Fossil Fuels vs Renewable Energy: Cost, Jobs & Economic Reality

26:20 – China’s Clean Energy Strategy: EVs, Batteries & Global Market Dominance

30:59 – Long-Term Economic Planning vs Short-Term Politics (Resilience Strategy)

33:53 – South Korea Economic Growth Strategy (Innovation, Industrial Policy & Technology)

35:01 – Future-Proofing Business: Climate Strategy, ESG & Workforce Transformation

38:45 – Corporate Strategy vs Government Policy (Climate Investment & Leadership)

41:18 – Leadership, Narrative & Market Behavior in Clean Energy Investment

43:43 – US vs China: Global Competition in Energy, AI & Economic Power

44:24 – Rapid Fire: Resilience Habits, Wall-E & Personal Insights

49:35 – Final Thoughts on Climate Change, Economics & Global Resilience

 

Creators and Guests

Host

Dr. Kelly Culver

Dr. Kelly Culver holds the world’s first doctorate of resiliency, having received her PhD in strategic resilience from the Paris School of Business. She is a seasoned global leader with 34 years of experience as a founder, director, entrepreneur, strategist, and executive coach.

Host

Jenn Quader

Jenn Quader is an American CEO, TEDx speaker, vocalist, writer, poet, and musical theatre enthusiast. Her personal mission is to empower the next generation of confident communicators by sharing her voice in the global movement toward empathetic and human-first business leadership.

Producer

Asef Quader

Asef Quader is a writer, producer and director based in Orange County, California. A 20-year marketing and advertising expert, his passions surround bringing stories of resiliency to life… along with eating good food and drinking good wine.

Editor

Podcircle

Premium podcast services for busy people and organizations. Visit Podcircle.com to learn more.

What is Resiliency The Podcast?

A global conversation of leaders, investors, and everyday changemakers aimed at redefining resilience in today’s ever-evolving world.
Dr. Kelly Culver and Jenn Quader sit down with influential guests who inspire, educate, and motivate people to build resilience, overcome hardships, positively impact their communities, and ultimately, help the world at large.

Jenn Quader (00:05)
Welcome to Resiliency, the podcast. Today's guest is an economist whose work lives at the intersection of climate change, innovation and human resilience. He's a globally respected thought leader in sustainable growth, clean investment and the economics of climate action.

He's a partner at Independent Economics, which is an international economic advisory working with senior global advisors to help businesses and governments address increasingly complex issues he co-heads macroeconomics and financial markets, as well as innovation and sustainability work. Now, he's also the special advisor for the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at Cambridge. He's a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics. He has

as head of economic forecasting at HM Treasury and led the Stern review on the economics of climate change. So it's not just all of these credits and all of this work that sets today's guest apart. What really sets him apart is his perspective. Today's guest understands that the climate conversation is not just about carbon or capital. It's about trust.

inclusion and the systems that can either hold us back or help us move forward. Please welcome an amazing global leader, Mr. Dimitri Zengelis. Welcome, Dimitri.

Dimitri (01:26)
Wow, what an introduction. Thanks, Jen. It's great to be here.

Kelly Culver (01:31)
Demetri, we are so excited that you're here and thank you so much for saying yes and let me wish you happy new year and I'm so happy to see your face again.

Dimitri (01:38)
Happy New Year. Yeah, it's real pleasure. Here we go, 2026,

fast north seat belts.

Kelly Culver (01:44)
That's right, fasten our seatbelts. So that leads me to the very first question, fasten our seatbelts. What does resiliency mean to you

Jenn Quader (01:44)
Woohoo!

Dimitri (01:51)
Right, well I mean think resilience to me means the ability to withstand shocks, withstand surprises and rebuild and bounce back. You know, and it's not always easy to do that and you know preparation and forethoughts and a little bit of investment whether it's time or money or emotional capital.

can strengthen a person's or a society's ability to be resilient in the face of surprises. And one thing that we shouldn't be about is that we will get surprises. ⁓ So we need to plan for them. One doesn't want to go down the road of Donald Rumsfeld, but there are known unknowns out there ⁓ and we need to plan for them.

Jenn Quader (02:38)
I love what you've said because you're talking about shocks and surprises. I think this year is a year already of shocks and surprises. We continue to, I'd say globally and geopolitically in all ways, have all of these shocks and surprises. And you specifically work in economics and in climate change. And those are.

Dimitri (02:44)
Right.

Jenn Quader (02:58)
some massive places where we have seen a lot of that change. As you said, change is now a constant. And also, you're working across all these organizations, which we talked about in the intro. How do you personally, Demetri, stay grounded and resilient as you look at and solve all these big, complex problems of the world?

Dimitri (03:17)
Well, I mean, I think it's probably a stretch to say that we solved them, ⁓ but it is at least heartening to know that a lot of us are working on them. you know, I think to some extent, ⁓ empowerment and a bit of control, dare I say it, ⁓ can help, you know, alleviate anxiety. So in that sense, you know, the fact that I feel I can do something about this ⁓ makes me,

at least more encouraged and you know especially when I can see roots to resolving some of these issues. I mean that has a flip side of course because often you find that these roots are so self-evidently beneficial it's pretty galling to figure out why we're not doing it, you know, why we haven't been doing it already, why is this such a struggle. But it gives you insights of the way ⁓ society works in that process and I think

you one of the reasons and and will probably come back to this but one of the reasons why so often we struggle to make progress on issues and such as a lot of the shocks in terms of resilience just climate but you know pandemics and technological shocks and so on ⁓ is that people don't feel that they have the power to make a difference and that would be feel a little bit and resigned and and and they feel

By being disempowered, they feel that actually the whole thing is just too big and it's better to just not think about it. So you get a kind of cognitive dissonance or worse still, you get a reaction, you get a backlash. Who are all these people on their high horses telling me what to do? Well, given that I can't do anything about it and there are elites and others who have put us in this situation, I don't want to be hectored. I don't want to be lectured. I don't want to be given a sort of moral talking to.

So the whole kind of inclusion part of this, which I'm sure we will come back to, is really important. coming back to my own experience, I do feel included. I see this as a big issue and I'm lucky enough to be working with a lot of great people in trying to find a resolution and then trying to communicate that and build a narrative and encourage others to do so in a way that's in their self-interest rather than in the self-interest of even future generations.

or people far, away. This is in everybody's interest and so everybody should play their part.

Kelly Culver (05:39)
like to stay just for a minute. You've said maybe we'll come back to the concept of inclusion. I'd like to stay in the space just for a few minutes because you know, there's, a lot of people in organizations that are helping others deal with things like climate anxiety. You know, the inability to there's another cop, you know, cop whatever number we're on. ⁓ And and I can't affect any change. So why should I care? Why would I bother? What's you know, what's the interest in it for me? And I'd like to ask you,

Dimitri (05:53)
Mmm.

Jenn Quader (05:54)
Hmm.

Kelly Culver (06:07)
How do we help people feel more included in climate solutions, especially those who are skeptical or those who feel left out so that it's a shared goal rather than we're seeing like this political fight right now geopolitically, we're certainly seeing it. How do we fix that?

Dimitri (06:20)
That's right.

Right so I mean an obvious answer is you want to make this inclusive right so you want the opportunities to apply to as many people as possible and you know people rightly respond if your if your job depends on the fossil fuel industry if you're a coal miner or you're in a community that's based on oil this change is gonna it's gonna be a painful one right if you're

If you're living in somewhere that's not well connected, that can't access public transport, you can't afford the latest electric vehicles. You've got an old clunker of a car, because that's what you have and it's can't afford to rip out a boiler and replace it with a heat pump. Having all these kind of...

much wealthier ⁓ and well-off people tell you that this is something that you must do can come across a bit obnoxious, quite frankly, and will often sort of box people into corners where they say, well, you you haven't done much for me. Why should I now join into what looks like your kind of moral crusade that you can spend money on and I can't?

So I think that's a sort of practical answer. You want to make sure that people are retooled, they're re-skilled. If there are opportunities in this new economy, and I would argue that they are and that they outweigh the opportunities from the old economy, then everybody should be enabled to have access to it. And, you know, in some cases it might even just mean compensation. But obviously if you don't, you know, if you don't spell out what those opportunities are and you don't talk about self-interest, you're very unlikely

to get much traction. The other problem we have that you've touched upon is that, you know, unfortunately politics has taken a nasty turn. And we can talk about whether that's a reaction to some extent to growing inequality and lack of inclusion and, you know, the divide between educated elites and others. And I think there's, you know, a lot to introspect there. But politics has become way more tribal now. It's become a bit of a team sport. It almost doesn't matter what the issues are.

and you pick your team and you get a bunch of you know you get like a sort of a basket or shopping list of issues that come with that team and there's no necessity you might take a you know a strong stance on immigration and abortion that doesn't mean that by necessity you should deny ⁓ the importance of climate risks or climate action they are very separate issues but unfortunately they tend to be bunched together so that people that take a position on one

⁓ have a sort of almost tribal association with a bunch of other positions which actually ought to be irrelevant. So think a lot of the work we need to undertake is to try and undo that. So people can think for themselves what's an issue that best serves their interests rather than the interests of the tribe or the interests of the team. Because I think this tribal thinking ultimately is not going to serve anyone except for the political elites and their friends and their funders. And I don't think if you ask people genuinely what they want,

uh... but that is actually what that they're aiming to do they need to start thinking for themselves but they need to have the ammunition and the need to have the information we need to have the narratives in order to really kind of powerfully make those cases rather than have other people preach those stories to them

Jenn Quader (09:34)
Boy, you have nailed it. I mean, wow, on exactly what's happening in American politics because in a true way, something comes up and the feeling I get from those that you would talk to are like, well, what am I supposed to believe about this based upon what side I'm on? And that is something that is being orchestrated through communications, through the way that it's happening is that people are being pushed to kind of choose sides.

And interesting, I never would have connected this to inclusion, but it exactly is, it's inclusion, which is this idea of making it understood, what is the benefit to the person? In marketing, we call it the WIFM, W-I-I-F-M, what's in it for me? So it's helping people understand that WIFM. And so now there's lots of challenges with the climate, we all know that, we're all afraid. And you mentioned that people might look at it as a moral crusade.

Dimitri (10:12)
Yeah.

You

Jenn Quader (10:26)
that you're taking your own morals to go do this. But there are actually a ton of benefits, as you're saying, to me today, not just a future generation, but to me, in facilitating and supporting and becoming part of this climate change, some of the things that I have from the notes that you shared are things like cheaper energy, smarter systems, greater efficiency. So I want to know from you, Demetri, in your role working across the globe in all of this, if anything, is there anything giving you hope?

that this transition is underway, this is taking place.

Dimitri (10:58)
Well, what's giving me hope that the transition is underway is the fact that the transition is underway. It may not feel like that, particularly in the US right now, but the pace at which the world has shifted to ⁓ renewables and is now shifting to ⁓ electrification and electric vehicles and so on has far outstripped anybody's expectations. And the reason for that is that it's now become self-evident that these are far more economically cost-effective.

forms of energy and economic systems. They weren't always and they required taxpayers money to make it so. But now, you know, the world has been investing more in renewables than in fossil fuel, electricity, and actually in recent years in everything, including transport. But for a decade, the world's been investing more in renewable electricity than in, you know, electricity that is sourced from gas and coal predominantly.

I'm not worth bearing in mind it's not not Scandinavia or California or the world you know the whole world now people will say yeah but you three quarters of our interest is still generated through fossil fuels but that's because the legacy capital is still there ⁓ the flows of investments are now all in renewables because that

you know much like all almost all in renewables it's about ninety something percent currently and that they're into renewables because they're just much cheaper they they out compete fossil fuels economically especially over the lifetime of the capital but actually in many cases it's actually cheaper to just scrap of the working gas and coal-fired power stations and switch to renewables because it's it's still cheaper and so that's what the world has predominantly

been doing, nobody anticipated that. To the extent that there's another 5 or 10 percent that still invests in fossil fuels for their electricity, that's often for political reason. The coal lobby is a powerful lobby. The oil and gas lobby, they're powerful lobbies. And it's also because in some parts of the world, including bits of China, which has really pushed renewable energy to great commercial advantage, the goods just haven't been upgraded to a sufficient standard to cope with some of the intermittency. But those

Those are all solvable and they are being solved. what gives me hope to answer your question is that this transition ⁓ is now unstoppable. Actually, that ship has sailed. is, you know, we will be generating our electricity towards the middle and end of this century worldwide, including in the U.S. through renewables and battery storage. We will all be driving electric vehicles. The question that Americans need to think about and Europeans too, is will those vehicles be produced at home? Because

we've taken a strategic position to ⁓ push those sectors or we've been porting them from China and elsewhere. And for a long time, speaking as a European, the European car industry has said, it's too soon to invest in battery electric vehicles. The technology is unproven, it's expensive. It's too soon, it's too soon. And then one morning they wake up and they say it's too late. The Chinese have stolen our lunch and we can't compete with them anymore.

and so let's try and get as many concessions to kind of allows to squeeze that last bit out of the combustion engine for as long as we possibly can and it's a similar story in america but that's not in europe self-interest it's not an america self-interest you know if i was somebody who was held back on reducing america's power in the world ⁓ and in you know ⁓ and handing over ⁓ economic advantage to the chinese i would be seriously

pushing America to keep investing in fossil fuels to sell a narrative of burn baby burn and to miss out on the revolution that the rest of the world is going to profit from. ⁓ Extraordinarily, you know, there are some parties within your own system that are actually championing those very antics. ⁓ You know, I would go as far as to that's unpatriotic because you really are shooting the American economy in the foot.

Like I said already, we're all going to be driving electric vehicles. We're all going to be generating our energy from renewables. Why? Because it's much cheaper. And one last important footnote to this, as Sam Altman and others have ⁓ testified, the cost of AI, which is predominantly the cost of compute and data storage, is going to converge on the cost of electricity. Who's going to have the cheapest electricity?

⁓ I can tell you with a great deal of certainty that's going to be China. Why? Well, because they've been spending all these years investing in renewables and battery storage and that is per unit cost and operating cost. That's where energy costs are going to fall. know, the economy of the 19th and 20th century and the 18th century indeed, especially in this country, were powered by fossil fuels. That's not going to be the source of energy that's going to power the economy in the 21st century.

Jenn Quader (15:58)
really want to jump in. know Dr. Kelly has a question for you, but I'm so glad you brought up AI because I work in an industry that focuses on commercial real estate investment. There's a ton of discussion around data centers and their development and how much energy they really suck. And so I can look at that from the infrastructure standpoint and say, I see your point, which is to say, well, we're going to have to figure out how to borrow or get ⁓ energy from countries that have been doing it better than us earlier than us.

do you see anything happening as far as demand? So here's what I understand. I've read an article that said something like, when you are polite to AI, like to chat GPT, it costs like $4 million or something. just to say thank you, because processing that takes so much.

Dimitri (16:36)
to say thank you at the end of it.

Jenn Quader (16:42)
is there gonna be some sort of education that helps people understand you should only use AI during these times? How do we temper this demand that is going exponential while we have these power crises?

Dimitri (16:53)
short answer is we need to invest substantially in the grid and around the world we're doing that. China's doing that at an extraordinary rate. We're doing that at a rate actually that is far higher than people commonly recognize. We're only a fraction of a percentage point shy of what the International Energy Agency tells us we need to do in terms of

growth in the electricity grid in order to meet a net zero target for 2050 and by the way, that's not trivial. We're gonna have to have enough You know grid we're have to have enough Electricity cables more or less to get us to the Sun and halfway back by you know some estimates That's a lot of cables. Yeah, that can be done There are technologies and in in new cables that can transmit a lot more power

⁓ using far fewer materials. This stuff can then be recycled and so on. You know, a lot of the talk about AI and water use is a little bit exaggerated because this is water that doesn't have to come from municipal sources. Water isn't as rare as we make out, but purified drinking water is, you know, so there are ways that we can resolve some of these problems. But it's true, AI does mean in the short run we have to ramp up our energy and some of that will be done.

through dispatchable gas. Most of that even now is going to be done through renewables and as you know you are seeing most of companies rapidly kind of filling every square inch of their rooftops, car parks and other properties with solar panels because that's the fastest and cheapest way to do it. ⁓

But I think ultimately the benefits from AI in terms of optimizing systems, terms of innovation, in terms of real time monitoring and management, not just of energy, but of food and of industrial supply lines, affords us so much opportunity to cut costs and to improve the efficiency of the economic system. But actually the benefits are worth it. And ultimately that extra electricity will be powered.

through renewables and storage. What it does mean however is that in the short run there's going to be quite a crunch, you know, as there's a race to get hold of those minerals, there will be a bit of a crunch to get these pieces of capital equipment which require ⁓ silicon, which require lithium, which require copper, depending on the technology.

And that's going to have to be done in a hurry because we're going to put these ⁓ sources of energy and systemic transition systems up. And once they're up, they stay up. And that's a key different from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels, you've got to burn them. You've got to dig them out. You've got to pump them out. You've got to put them in pipelines and ships, on trains, transport them halfway across the world, refine them, distribute them, burn them, whether it's in a combustion engine or an electricity generating plant. And then when you've done that, you've got to go back and do it all over again.

Which by the way is why fossil fuels are uncompetitive because they have one element, one part of that production process which is incredibly expensive and that's labor. You need an awful lot of labor to do all the digging and transporting and refining and then do it again. Once you put up a solar panel or ⁓ a wind farm, it more or less takes care of itself. Sure, there's a bit of maintenance, right? But there isn't this huge army of people working and supplying the raw materials. That's why, you know, that's because it's renewable and that's why

the costs are coming down because the costs are a function of technologies, of production processes, learning by doing in factories and distribution and maintenance and so on. Whereas the cost of fossil fuel are a function of how many people you need to employ and how exotic the technique and remote the location from which you need to get the fossil fuel from. Obviously the more fossil fuel you want, the higher those costs. So that's why the race is being won by these new sectors.

Kelly Culver (20:53)
think you've just brilliantly described what I'm going to call the great transition. You know, there's points in time in history where there's been a huge transition. And this is is one of them. And I'd like to ask you, how do we make climate transition easier, particularly for people who lack the means to change how they live, work or travel? You know, you talked about somebody still has an old clunker of a car and they don't have

where they don't have public transit. I'm in Ontario right now on the family farm. There's no transit here. If you don't have a vehicle, life isn't going to work. And so we can't be so sanctimonious. That's my word. You used a different one on how we take these values and say, OK, now everybody has to do that. But what do we do? How do we do that, Demetri?

Dimitri (21:23)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, sanctimonious I think is a fair term. I mean, you know, the answer is that we need to kind of share the opportunities and share the costs. The reality is that that's difficult. The politics is difficult and a lot of people who ultimately will benefit from cheaper bills, cheaper electricity and the jobs that come with it. In the short run,

will be worst affected and everyone knows the cost in the short run. You know what it means to change your boiler or buy a new car. Somebody telling you that if you don't support this change, your job's gonna go to somewhere in China. Yeah, well, you're okay, but that sounds a bit more like an opinion and it's unproven and by the time you find out it's true, it's too late anyway, but the cost of the car, you know here and now. So I think some of this is gonna just be intractable.

There's always ⁓ difficulty in structural change in this country. You know, when people shifted from candles to ⁓ kerosene and then to electricity, the whalers went on strike. They did that because they wanted to postpone electrification. It wouldn't have made a difference in the long run. We were always going to electrify just as.

⁓ You know drill baby drill is not going to make a difference in the long run the US will be generating its power like everybody else through renewables and electricity and driving electric vehicles in that transition, I think ⁓ you need to think very carefully about the distributional impacts the inclusion the opportunities You're not going to solve all of them You're not going to be able to compensate everyone But I think a lot of people if they realize or recognize that this is the way the world is going to go

and realize and recognize that actually there are a lot of opportunities that can be made by actually proactively planning and managing that transition. They might, from a perspective of self-interest and resilience, say, look, can't adopt the ostrich mentality and dig my head in the sand, because that's not gonna help me and it's not gonna help my family. I need to kind of recognize which way the, the proverbial bread is buttered and start doing my best to play a part of that.

So I want to make my organization best in class in terms of efficiency, for example, or in terms of its ability to export to global markets that may be carbon constrained or might have tougher policies than we do at the moment. These are all things that reflect an understanding of the way the world is going. And I think more and more as people come to recognize, because even the oil companies recognize ⁓ that demand for oil is going to start to wane.

We've probably reached peak fossil fuel this year. China's probably reached peak fossil fuel this year. The US actually reached peak fossil fuel way back in the 1980s. Europe in the 1970s. So we've all been weaning ourselves off fossil fuel. It's been India and China that have been driving the demand. China and India, both about, in fact, India has already peaked and China's about to peak. There's not much left, right? So the fossil fuel companies, they know that. That's why they don't want to talk up.

renewables because if you do that then you talk down the oil price because the oil price today is a function of demand for oil in the future. You can store oil, it's fungible. So you don't want to tell anybody that there's not going to be as much demand for oil in the future if you're a half competent oil executive. You've got to tell a very different story. It would be an abrogation of your duties if you started championing renewables. You'd be eating into your own profits and you should probably be sacked.

Jenn Quader (25:03)
you

Dimitri (25:10)
If you do it to the fact that people point to oil companies as a source of, ⁓ you know, genuine and reliable expectations as to the energy transition always strikes me as somewhat staggering. But individuals who understand the story, they can behave in a very different manner. And again, it's back to resilience. If you understand the likely direction of change and what nature that change may take.

you can put you and your family and indeed the organization you work for in a better, more future-proof position to withstand those kinds of ⁓ transitionary shocks.

Jenn Quader (25:43)
I just need to comment and say it's a bit of a wow for me because I hear people who talk who are climate experts. But it's rare that I run into someone like you, Dimitri, who is both a climate expert and an economic expert. It's kind of like I feel like I'm at a bar and somebody threw two darts and they both hit the bullseye at the same time. Because your understanding is so interesting, especially talking about

Again, we're back into what's in it for me. What's in it for the economist or for the politician or for the person who's leading someone? You can't say, we're going to be tearing down oil because it affects what's on that balance sheet. It affects the futures, the pro forma, whatever that is, that's what exists. So it's really a perfect transition. ⁓ please. No, don't be sorry.

Dimitri (26:20)
Absolutely.

Which by the way is why, I'm so sorry,

it's one of the reasons why China has been so proactive, right? They don't have much oil, they import a lot of it. So they figured out, we don't have much oil, we can see that electricity and electric vehicles and renewables are gonna be cheaper. We're not gonna compete with the Germans on the combustion engine because they're light years ahead of us. Why don't we invest in electric vehicles and wipe the floor?

And boy, how are they wiping the floor? They did it for all sorts of reasons. They invested in renewables partly because they understood the commercial reality, partly because they're China, and they can make long-term decisions without having to be quite so constrained by the piffling nuisance of democracy. So the fact that people might have opposed it didn't necessarily get in the way of the 13th, 14th, five-year plans. And they did it.

partly, and this is almost the opposite of, you know, this is an example of the opposite of what I've just said, because despite the lack of kind of formalized democratic processes, the Chinese government doesn't like being unpopular amongst influential urban middle classes who in China were choking, often to death, not even as a hyperbole, but as a fact, ⁓ through particulate pollution. Where does particulate pollution come from? It comes from coal-fired generation.

where does nitrogen pollution come from? It comes from cars. So they had a short-term, narrow ⁓ reason to push the renewable agenda and the electric vehicle agenda because it would clean up their cities and that was a very popular thing to do. So the Chinese have acted brilliantly. They solved a local problem. They've cornered a market. It's now too late really for the rest of the world.

to compete with China on batteries, on electric vehicles and on renewables, because these sectors have economies of scale. So the more you invest in them, the cheaper they become. The cheaper they become, the more people, you know, the more you build these knowledge clusters and supply lines in those parts of the world that dominate the production of these things. So it's a bit hard for the rest of the world to get a look in. But it's been a mix of politics. It's been a mix of self-interest. And it's been a mix of strategic planning that has worked very well for China.

I don't think it's beyond ⁓ the scope of ⁓ Western democracies to do more to think strategically despite the constraints associated with ⁓ having to bring people along with you and the fact that these people will understand the costs of change better than they will understand the benefits. That's normal. Change is always asymmetric in terms of how people perceive the

The losers of any change, they know exactly who they are, they know how much it's going to cost, they know in the case of corporations which politicians is to bend in order to stop the change from happening. The beneficiaries from change, they're often a bit further out, they're more diffused, they're all of us as consumers who will get better products, cheaper energy, more innovation. And they are often companies and businesses that have...

yet to scale up and become profitable and create jobs. know, change is a difficult thing to bring about, but, know, in a very dynamic way, the US, for example, has been very good at generating change through, entrepreneurial spirit through the scale of the market, through finance. But the politics has also been very helpful. There's been huge amounts of investment, public investment in DARPA, in the Institute of Health.

and in other organizations that has pushed the knowledge frontier, not to mention NASA and the defense industry, but has had spillovers into other sectors. So again, from the US perspective, a move that goes completely the opposite direction to what China's doing, which is to invest less in science and research and development and less in the technologies of tomorrow, could really cost American households, American families dear.

in an environment where the world is changing so so rapidly on i i i i worry about that you know why why is there a sort of death wish going on in parts of the world that's happening on a plate ⁓ such huge economic advantage to our key competitor ⁓ which is china it's it's it's kind of bombing

Kelly Culver (30:59)
I totally agree with what Demetrius just said, like, like, make this make sense. It's hard to make this make sense. And I think it comes back to, you know, the thing, the thing, if we take a resilience lens on this, resilience requires long term planning, like what China is able to do. Resilience is not politically expedient, ever. And

Dimitri (31:18)
Yeah, no, that's right.

Kelly Culver (31:20)
You know, and we can, that's it, that's the bottom line. So we need to always take that long-term view and then work back on how do we want to get there. And that's not an easy thing for governments to want to be able to do. You know, I think of China, I think of Singapore, I can't think of anybody else to tell you the truth. So it's a hard thing to do. ⁓ And politics has become so polarized. And we talk about populism coming up about, you know, it's...

Dimitri (31:44)
Yeah.

Kelly Culver (31:49)
This is a tough nut to crack.

Dimitri (31:52)
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. know, it's a bit we can have, you know, you can think of a sort of personal analogy if you want to be resilient. You need to consider what you eat and you might want to visit the gym. That's not easy in the short run, right? It's painful in the short run. We'd all rather sit on the, you know, on the couch and watch TV if we had a choice. you know, great bags of comfort food and ice cream and God knows what. But resilience requires doing something different and thinking ahead and.

that's never going to be that easy. If it was that easy, we'd all do it and we'd be resilient, right? So ⁓ in terms of the countries that you listed, I I think there are perhaps a few others. ⁓ You know, there are examples from the US, from different states in the US of strategic planning, from cities in the US. There are examples in Europe, perhaps especially in Scandinavia. There's a shining example in Asia, which is South Korea.

South Korea took a number of economic strategic decisions to transition its economy began with heavy industries shipbuilding chemicals that went on to consumer electronics and then it went on to high-end ⁓ technologies and we now have some some phones giving apple a run for its money.

South Korea did not begin by having comparative advantages in any of these sectors. was policy led strategic decisions that allowed it to do so well out of this. If South Korea adopted some of the recommendations of the World Bank and the IMF and others by pursuing its comparative advantage in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, then

South Korea, the South Korean economy would probably be the world's most efficient and successful exporter of rice by now. Thankfully, they didn't do that. They took strategic decisions to build entirely new production sectors and have done very well out of it. They are now have a per capita income that's higher than most of Europe and higher than many states in the US.

Jenn Quader (33:53)
It's incredible to me because on a global scale, mean, there's tug and pull everywhere and everything that you're talking about shows me that, and I'll restate what you said, which is it's a race to the top, right? The governments are racing forward. I wanna bring this to the corporate lens. You mentioned this earlier about corporate leaders and how they can take part. And actually it's interesting. I liked your metaphor about ⁓ if we all wanna lose weight, we'd go to the gym and we'd eat right, you know? And my question, I'm gonna frame it through the corporate lens, which is, hey, look!

Dimitri (34:20)
I'm not saying I practice all that, but yeah, quite,

Jenn Quader (34:22)
It's the new year, we're all practicing it for a day.

Kelly Culver (34:26)
this week.

Jenn Quader (34:28)
You know,

it's a little harder. When we are kind of self-governed, I'm sitting on my couch, I can decide if I want to eat ice cream or if I want to go and do that. But when you come into it, I'm going to look just through the corporate lens and not the government lens. On the corporate lens, there's a governance. You you have stakeholders, have shareholders, you have a board of directors, and there is a massive focus on profit, profit, profit. And a lot of your message, Dimitri, focuses on human capital and social capital and really kind of

making all boats rise by making good long-term decisions. I guess I want to know from you, what's it going to take for leaders at the corporate level to start seeing that this type of resilience is not a cost, but it's actually an opportunity. It's a competitive advantage. It's a shared prosperity opportunity.

Dimitri (35:01)
Yeah.

Right.

Right. And that is exactly the question. And look, you we need to start by recognizing we said already that change can be painful. We said already that there are distributional consequences and let's be realistic. There's money still to be squeezed out of fossil fuels. Right. And it's it's cheap money. It's easy money because you don't have to make much of an effort to transition anything. You just keep sweating the assets you got.

The reality of course is that if you want to stay in business in you know, in the 2030s and the 2040s, ⁓ and you really want to have networks and systems that that are cost effective and are compatible with the technologies and indeed the institutions and social choices of future decades, you need to think about investing in assets that are future-proofed. And that means not only your buildings and your infrastructure, we talked about electricity grids.

We talked about networking ICT and bringing AI into control systems and optimize systems across the world. But you also need your human capital to match up. You need the skills of your workers to be able to roll out those new technologies, to find a way where AI makes whatever ⁓ existing workforces do more efficient and productive.

rather than you know being replaced by either other countries or indeed itself. However this pans out this revolution is going to be disruptive lot of jobs will change that doesn't mean that people are going to be forced out of the labor market entirely or at least the ones that At least reckoned for this change i'm much more likely to be the last people standing.

And I think in any case they'll create whole new sectors and whole new industries that integrate I in a commercially profitable way that employs other people in ⁓ those industries. But they need to be the ones that think ahead. So future-proofing skills, future-proofing physical assets, but also ⁓ intangible assets, the technologies, the ideas, the processes, and indeed the institutions that are necessary to allow and enable.

this kind of change and that includes political institutions that include social capital the issues we talked about in terms of trust in terms of people seeing this is being in their collective interest and actually rallying around the government that says look why don't we make this as profitable as possible before somebody else does ⁓ and see this is a way to enable you know own ⁓ national aspirations to be met you know that requires leadership

We talked about strategic decisions strategic decisions don't happen in a vacuum They require leadership innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum. It often requires leadership It requires somebody to say look there's money to be made in committing money now Into something that isn't yet profitable because we think it will be profitable None of that is about looking backwards. None of that is about squeezing the most out of the economy We had in the past. It's about looking forward. It's about resilience and it's about future proofing

⁓ the assets that you invest in. And we're all faced with investment decisions, whether we're households or businesses. And if we see those investments through that lens, then I think we're much more likely to make the right choices and much less likely to be left with stranded assets, stranded infrastructure and stranded skills that are either going to be ⁓ devalued or scrapped in the economy of the future.

Jenn Quader (38:45)
Wow, okay, I'm dying to ask a question and this is one, I'm just interested in it because when you talk about future proofing, and I love what you talked about, future proof your assets, your skills, everything. you also talked at some point during this about long-term versus short-term decisions and how we have to look at the long-term impact. And my question, which again, it's a weird one, when I think of a corporation, I think of people who have a leader who spends their lifetime sitting in that seat.

Dimitri (38:49)
Yeah.

Jenn Quader (39:10)
When I think of politics, I think of someone who spins in and out every four years or eight years. And sometimes, as we've seen, the person who's sitting in the seat has very different thoughts that, or maybe they're worried about their WIIFM their what's in it for me. I kind of want to ask about that dichotomy between government and corporate, and how do you build long-term thinking in whenever it's a revolving door?

Dimitri (39:23)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

and it's critical because the two interact and reinforce each other. ⁓ Look, if you're going to buy an electric vehicle, you want to feel that there's a public program to encourage recharging, right? feel that that's not going to happen for another five or 10 years, you'll hold back buying an electric vehicle. If you hold back buying an electric vehicle, then your electric vehicle industry is not going to flourish. And in a sense, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those that oppose the change show that it wasn't ever that

successful. So the psychology of change is really critically important. If you're a mayor or a business person or a politician and you tell people that renewables and electric vehicles are prohibitively expensive and there's no new market for them and the finance is niche, are they going to invest in this stuff? It's very unlikely. Well, it's actually the investment and the rolling out of all this kit that brings the cost down.

So if they don't invest in it, the cost won't come down and the whole thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If on the other hand you say, look, this is the future, the costs are going to come down, the market's enormous, there's great profit potential and the finance is becoming mainstream, then they end up investing and they bring the cost down and that also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, obviously the engineering and the technology has to work, otherwise it's just one big Ponzi scheme.

But the Chinese has shown us very clearly that it does work and there are others across the world that are showing us that it does work. So this interaction between policy and business through leadership and credibility is critically important. You know, just as people won't buy electric vehicles unless they feel secure that there's going to be charging infrastructure, businesses are unlikely to sink huge amounts of money.

Jenn Quader (40:56)
Ha

Dimitri (41:18)
in transitioning to renewables and creating the goods and services associated with the clean economy, if the politicians are telling them that they're not going to provide an enabling environment in the early years when it's still expensive before you get the learning by doing, before you get the economies of scale. said already these things never started cheap. They started expensive and somebody, usually the taxpayer, had to put foot the bill for making them cheap. But in the end, it's in everybody's interest. So unless you get that coordination from government,

⁓ that the rules of the game the standards the regulations the taxing the subsidies are going to be favorably disposed to private investment in making this change the private sector will hold back even if they realize this is how the future is going to go they'll just say that will wait another five years will will kick this into touch and then we'll come back and revisited in in in five ten years well that's fine but if the rest of the world isn't holding back ⁓ and you know

Let give you another example. If 10, 20 years ago America stood up at these kind of global climate conferences, these sort of annual jamborees, the cops, and said, not going to push climate policies, the Indians and the Chinese said, screw you. And they did. Perhaps not using those terms, but they basically said, if you're not going to it, we're not going to do it. We're much poorer than you. We're not responsible for all this gunk.

in the atmosphere you guys are if you're not willing to make the change why should we and the whole thing came to a grinding hold now every time america stands up and says we're gonna kind pull out of the paris agreement and we're gonna hold back our climate policies i think the the chinese in the ⁓ the indians you know ⁓ respond with the proverbial high five it's great

If America wants to shoot its industry in the foot, means that more opportunities for the Chinese and the Indians. You don't see them complaining, you don't see them chivvy the Americans, and you certainly don't see them slowing down in their transitions. They see this as an opportunity to steal a march on those countries ⁓ that act as laggards in terms of recognizing the way the economy is going to evolve, and good on them. Fair play, I say. If they can show strategic leadership and make money out of this,

and the planet benefits, then good for them. ⁓ But I wouldn't recommend it as a policy stance for others to follow.

Jenn Quader (43:43)
You know, it's a brilliant case for why organizations must be focused on strategic resilience, because you've just given me a bunch of cases for why. Number one, people will invest in you more if you have looked at that and you are prepared. And number two, you talked about this earlier too. You talked about, Dr. Kelly asked about ⁓ anxiety, climate anxiety, and you said, what really helps me is empowerment and control. Those preparatory plans are what give companies that empowerment and control.

I think it's brilliant. All right, Demetri, are you ready for the very best part of Resilience with the Podcast, the rapid fire questions?

Dimitri (44:19)
Almost certainly not, no, but go ahead.

Kelly Culver (44:21)
Hahaha!

Jenn Quader (44:24)
That's how we like them. A little afraid and ready to go. Dr. Kelly, take it.

Kelly Culver (44:27)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dimitri (44:27)
Yeah, that's

you block me.

Kelly Culver (44:29)
Okay, okay. I'm glad you're not ready, so here we go. What's your favorite movie or TV show that makes you feel resilient?

Dimitri (44:37)
⁓ I have an eight-year-old child, ⁓ so I don't get to read much these days. Most of the I watch are targeted at a younger market. Although, brilliantly, most of these movies, if you're a parent, you'll know this, are really cleverly designed to appeal to both children and the adults, and often with some quite raunchy puns in there that go way over the heads of children.

Kelly Culver (44:47)
Ha ha ha ha.

Jenn Quader (44:48)
No.

Dimitri (45:06)
It's sort of dog whistle stuff, but which often result in adults unexpectedly chuckling to children's surprise. But in terms of resilience, guess a film that I would recommend that I have had the pleasure of watching in the last few years is Wall-E. I don't know if you've seen it. It's an animated film.

Kelly Culver (45:24)
Yes,

Jenn Quader (45:25)
Love that

Kelly Culver (45:25)
yes!

Jenn Quader (45:26)
movie. Love that.

Dimitri (45:28)
And if it's about anything, it's about resilience. It's really about the kind of the worst and the best of human nature and how we can get ourselves into a hole and how potentially we can get ourselves out of a hole. And it's a very enjoyable movie to watch.

Kelly Culver (45:46)
that's fabulous. That's fabulous. What about a song that makes you feel resilient?

Dimitri (45:52)
God, ⁓ I thought you might ask me that. The answer I'm going to give is an odd answer, but in terms of giving me a feeling of resilience, ⁓ the Gorillaz song Plastic Beach, which actually is all about environmental degradation and ⁓ pollution and obviously the names in the title, but the melody is so uplifting.

Kelly Culver (45:54)
you

Jenn Quader (45:56)
Ha

Dimitri (46:18)
I think it's actually a tune that champions resilience and inspires people to try and make a better fist of things despite the ⁓ rather gloomy lyrics.

Kelly Culver (46:33)
What's the last thing that made you really laugh out loud?

Dimitri (46:37)
god, my eight year old makes me laugh out loud all the time. You won't want me to begin to explain how and why. Children are nothing if not a of, ⁓ both a mix of kind of being absurd, but also pointing out the absurdity of a lot of ⁓ the adult world. ⁓ So yeah, I hasten to, I don't really want to kind of go into details as to

Kelly Culver (46:39)
You

No, you don't

need to. You don't need to.

Jenn Quader (47:08)
Ha ha ha.

Dimitri (47:09)
I don't think they bear much scrutiny if made public. ⁓

Kelly Culver (47:18)
We're going to protect the eight year old, but

we can relate to what you just said. Totally. So I'd like to ask you sort of my final question for you is what is a question you would like to leave for someone in the future coming on to Resiliency the Podcast?

Dimitri (47:25)
Hahaha.

Do know, right at the beginning, what you said would happen, happened, and I thought of a brilliant question. And then we went on to have this amazing discussion. I have no idea what it was.

I was really kind of, you know, was punching the air inside going, yeah, that's a great question.

Jenn Quader (47:59)
you, Dimitri, is what keeps... yeah.

Dimitri (47:59)
I've thought another one. This isn't this isn't the punch in the air question.

So please brace yourself. It's not very good, but I thought you know given the festive season That's that's that's behind us How has the next guest sought to build resilience

Jenn Quader (48:03)
We're good.

Dimitri (48:19)
after spending, depending on how they spent the festive season, but if it's anything like the way I spent the festive season, there's going to have to be some work in January to rebuild my personal resilience and I'd be very keen to get tips on how they manage. That could be very helpful.

Kelly Culver (48:32)
Ha

Jenn Quader (48:37)
That's a brilliant

question and so well timed. Yes, we will ask that of the next guest because we want to know too.

Kelly Culver (48:39)
That's good, yep.

Dimitri (48:42)
It's

Kelly Culver (48:44)
That works.

Dimitri (48:45)
right.

It's back to self-interest and it's topical.

Jenn Quader (48:51)
It's brilliant and

it's exactly right. We are all re-seeking our state of being of resilience. past guest and that question is, Demetri, what keeps you doing the right thing when no one is watching?

Dimitri (49:05)
Who's to say I do do the right thing when nobody's watching? ⁓

Jenn Quader (49:11)
That's right, a daredevil over here.

Dimitri (49:13)
And that's all

I'm going to say on that matter. Next question, please.

Jenn Quader (49:16)
That's enough

said and well answered. Well, Demetri, listen, you have given us such a wide perspective. just, really want to say thank you again for coming on. I am unbelievably impressed with your ability to synthesize your knowledge.

Dimitri (49:21)
you

Jenn Quader (49:35)
of climate and resources and governmental geopolitical forces and really dovetail that with a corporate lens and with just a personal resilience lens. I find you just absolutely wonderful. I wonder if you could share ⁓ if people who are listening would like to reach out to you, learn more about what you do, follow anything, how can they find you?

Dimitri (49:51)
Yes.

So they can find me all over the place. First of all, I've got quite a Googleable name. You'll find that there aren't many Demetri Zengelis out there. ⁓ But ⁓ you can find me ⁓ at Independent Economics, which is a bespoke consultancy. You can find me at the London School of Economics. And you can find me at the University of Cambridge as well, these are the three organizations with which I'm most active. ⁓ And I have emails associated with each of them.

which the alert student will quickly be able to ⁓ unearth. ⁓ But I'm happy to obviously circulate it with you guys and if anybody wants to follow up, please do send it to them.

Jenn Quader (50:39)
Fantastic. Thank you, Dimitri. We cannot thank you enough. We really appreciate it. And to all of our listeners, thank you so very much for being here. If resiliency is a topic that you, like us, are still working on in your daily life, please subscribe, follow, like this episode, and please keep coming back to hear more stories, strategies, and inspiration on how to embrace change, overcome challenges, and redefine resilience in today's ever-evolving world.

As always, I'm Jen Quater. You can find me online or at my company, thesmartagency.com, my wonderful, brilliant, well-traveled, just incredible co-host, Dr. Kelly Culver. You can find her online, LinkedIn or Instagram, or at theculvergroup.ca. As always, we just wish you the most resilience, the most strength, and we look forward to seeing you on another episode of Resiliency, the podcast. Take care, everybody.

Kelly Culver (51:17)
you