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In 1990, the IPCC, the intergovernmental panel on 
climate change publishes its first ever report.  

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Based on input from scientists, it finds that 
the planet has warned half a degree over the past  

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century. IPCC warns at the time that only strong 
measures to stop rising greenhouse gas emissions  

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will prevent serious global warming. And this will 
pave the way for UN negotiations for a climate  

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convention. Many COPs later, there we are a world 
trying to avert catastrophe by limiting global  

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warming to one and a half degrees. My guest for 
this new episode of Xennials is Gernot Wagner.  

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He's climate economist at Columbia Business School 
and he's also a Xennial. So welcome to Xennials.

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Hello Gernot.

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Hi Charlotte. Great to be here.

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Thank you so much for joining us. So Gernot, 
to start with, I'd like to reflect on this 1989  

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article in the Los Angeles Times titled, 'Global 
Warming is Expected to be the Hot Issue of the  

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1990s' with the following subtitle' Environment. 
Some scientists studying the Greenhouse Effect  

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say the sky is falling. Others believe the 
best advice is to stay cool.' So Gernot,  

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the 1990s were definitely a time of 
increased climate change awareness,  

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and of course at the time it was called 
global warming, and we talked about the  

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Greenhouse Effect a lot as well. How do 
you reflect on this headline from 1989?

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Well, it would have been nice had we 
paid more attention in many ways than we  

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ended up doing. We knew enough to act and 
basically, well, we tried certain things,  

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lots of things did happen. Like Kyoto protocol 
in 1997, there was a big buildup to that. And  

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then it turned out that frankly we ended up doing 
much too little to in fact turn this ship around.

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Gernot, Since you are a Xennial like me, 
tell us about your personal journey of  

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awareness of climate change and why you 
decided to devote your life so far to it.

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I guess what I often say is, so every kid is 
an environmentalist. Every 8-year-old reminds  

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the parents to turn off the water while 
brushing teeth, and I just never grew  

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up. I can tell you I've literally been doing 
this, this being frankly, climate economics,  

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even that the economics bit since the nineties, 
since my teenage years actually, I duck through  

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my paper archives if you can believe that. That's 
still a thing. But I have this McKinsey article  

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from 1996 were, okay, so this was me naive, 
little Austrian kid, a 16-year-old at the time,  

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no internet yet, trying to figure out what 
it is that makes business business leaders,  

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economics more broadly, and climate 
be at odd with each other. And I  

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stumbled upon this newspaper clipping about 
a competitive advantage through going green,  

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sort of this very nerdy thing for a 16-year-old. 
And it mentioned McKinsey, the consultancy.

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So I wrote this very earnest handwritten 
letter to New York and got a brochure back  

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along the lines of stay in school, don't do 
drugs, and call us again in 10 years. And  

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I still have that. And yes, the title was 
Competitive Advantage Through Going Green,  

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one of the very, very early entries into 
this category that of course by now is much,  

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much more prominent. But yeah, that set me off 
on this. It's not economics or climate change  

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or the environment, it's both. We've got to 
figure out how to channel regulatory market  

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forces for lack of a better, less nerdy term 
and basically work with as opposed to against.

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It's interesting in light of what's 
happened recently in the US with  

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many financial institutions and investors 
going back from promises they have made to  

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be more committed to fighting climate 
change, this link between being green  

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and being economically competitive. 
Do you think it's well understood?

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No, it's the shorthand. And maybe I should stop 
there because in many ways that's the task.  

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In many ways, it is about educating, it's about 
figuring out how to frankly make clear that yes,  

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climate risk is financial risk. But the amazing 
thing in many ways is that, so there's this term  

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greenwashing, there's also a term called green 
hushing, which is actually much more important  

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than this context. So yes, there's some big 
banks prominently exiting certain alliances  

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while actually they're not changing much in terms 
of their investment strategy or if anything,  

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they're doubling down on investing in low carbon, 
high efficiency and so on. They just don't want  

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to talk about it because of political backlash 
from one side of the aisle, to put it bluntly.  

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And what ended up happening is the big ones, 
the big asset managers from BlackRock on down,  

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yes, exiting formally, but indirectly or deep 
down in the bowels of the investment decisions,  

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basically doubling down on the goals 
that those alliances set out to pursue.

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Gernot, the reason why I started this podcast 
is because I'm a mother, first of all,  

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and I'm aging secondly, and I could feel a great 
degree of, or I can feel a great degree of anxiety  

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within the youth related to various issues like 
climate change, of course, the acceleration of  

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digitalization, AI and gen ai, et cetera. And 
I guess I wanted to share the message that we  

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also as Xennials lived through an era of great 
acceleration of technology and societal change.  

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So I want to hear your thoughts on this recent 
research that shows that millennials and Gen Z  

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experience greater levels of fear, guilt, and 
outrage about the impacts of climate change  

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compared to all the Gen X or baby boomer and 
postwar group generations towards climate change,  

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of course. What do you think is different 
about Millennials and Gen Z and explains this  

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real anxiety? And first of all, are you climate 
anxious as well? Is that the word you would use?

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I would, yes. And as you might be able 
to tell from the Legos behind me. So yes,  

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there's a 10 and the 12-year-old, oh, 13 by 
the way, sorry, 10 and 13-year-old living  

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here who are probably even more anxious. And 
I would say for all the right reasons. So what  

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makes Xennials different in many ways from 
generations before is that we were the first  

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generation growing up with this consciousness, 
with the knowledge of, yeah, we know this is bad,  

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we know we need to do something about it. And also 
the first generation with some of the right tools,  

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not all of them yet. So in the nineties we did not 
yet have the technologies, the solutions. Solar  

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PV was not yet the cheapest form of electricity 
in history as it is now. Back then it was, oh,  

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wouldn't it be nice if we saw some of the 
trends, but we didn't yet have the tools.  

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But back to the anxiety, yes, we were in many 
ways, we are the first generation who grew up  

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as teenagers at a time when we knew enough to 
know that things are only going to get worse.

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That's an interesting point. And going back 
to the survey, it also shows something very  

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interesting here. It's the fact that despite the 
differences in emotional response, generations,  

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all generations tend to have the same level 
of awareness of the impact of climate change.  

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There again, what do you think that is? And you've 
talked about information, the fact that we've got  

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the internet, social media, access to knowledge 
and information all the time. Surely that's  

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what's really changed the emotional responses of 
today's generations compared to previous ones.

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Oh, absolutely. And I do think, 
right, so if you take a snapshot,  

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I mean that's what this poll really is. I 
believe it's sort of a snapshot that says,  

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okay, in a certain year let's poll everybody 
across generations and see whether they believe  

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the science, whether they understand the science 
of climate change, of global warming. And yes,  

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it's easy to see how basically there shouldn't 
be any differences across generations in terms  

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of that fundamental knowledge. There should. 
And apparently there are differences across  

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generations in terms of, well, the anxiety 
we feel about it because frankly, yes,  

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it makes a difference if you spend your youth, 
your teenage years, your early adulthood,  

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living in a world where it is clear that certain 
things that previous generations and the current  

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ones too have been and are still doing, are 
in fact pushing us ever closer to the brink.

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And that is a very, very different environment to 
grow up in than frankly the sort of realization  

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later in life where you build your single 
family home out in the suburbs and so on.  

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And then eventually somebody comes around 
and says, wait, actually urban planning,  

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denser cities are in fact a key solution to 
climate change as opposed to basically growing up  

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in an environment where it's already pretty darn 
clear. And just to use my personal example, I've  

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never driven in my life, I never got a driver's 
license. So as an 18-year-old in 1998, that was a  

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bit unusual. It was a bit of a goofball, oddball. 
So frankly, everybody else I knew in the small  

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town in Austria got their license at 18. I didn't, 
I left to study in the US at that time, which of  

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course was one of the factors. So I was just too 
busy in college to bother, and I didn't need it.

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I didn't need a car by now. Okay, here in New 
York, I live in a city where I think it's like  

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90% of us don't own cars, and over 50, over 60% 
of adults driving of driving age don't bother with  

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a license. So some of us might have driven in the 
past, but it's just like, why do you need to stand  

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in line to get your driver's license in renew 
route if you don't in fact need it? And that's  

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a big, big change. There's also generational 
shift here. So 18 year olds today are less likely,  

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much less likely to bother with the driver's 
license. Okay, what does that mean? Okay,  

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they live in the city, they live closer to public 
transport, they live in smaller apartments in  

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more dense urban environments. And that is a 
very, very different world to grow up in. Where  

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it is frankly, painfully obvious that there are 
better ways to organize ourselves as a society,  

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and there are some worse ways that have 
a bigger, worse environmental impact.

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Absolutely. Now, a message of hope, hopefully 
Gernot in the nineties and early noughties,  

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there was a notable environmental achievement. The 
chemicals responsible for the whole in the ozone  

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layer, the CFCs were phased out in Europe and 
phased down in the rest of the world. And this  

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was achieved mostly thanks to the 1987 Montreal 
Protocol, a global agreement that came into force  

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in 1989. So is it helpful to use such a powerful 
example of collaboration to discuss the need,  

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the fact for even greater cooperation 
to tackle climate change? Or is climate  

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change such a vast systemic issue that the 
parallels are really not very helpful at all?

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So unfortunately there are fundamental differences 
as it turned out by now that make this analogy  

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rather poor one. Now, it doesn't mean that the 
Montreal protocol wasn't an unmitigated success  

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story. It was, it also in many ways served 
as the template of what ended up being the  

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Kyoto Protocol of 1997 were, yes, we negotiated a 
top-down climate agreement that included Europe,  

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the us, some other rich nations, Japan, Russia 
as well. It excluded India and China and much  

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of the developing world and didn't exclude in the 
sense of not include in the overall negotiations,  

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but there were no commitments for India and 
China. And overall the top down approach  

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ended up, ended up not working in many ways for 
climate as it did for the Montreal protocol,  

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for the ozone hole in the atmosphere. And I think 
the big difference is that CO2 oil, coal, gas  

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producing CO2, causing those emissions, causing 
climate change are just much more ubiquitous.

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So that's one. And then two, even in 1989 already 
we had alternatives. DuPont, the company that held  

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the patent for the CFCs also already had the 
patent for what came next for the replacements.  

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So that makes it very much easier to say, 
oh yeah, let's ban the offending substance,  

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let's make sure we face it down, that eventually 
out to heal the ozone hole because frankly,  

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those who profited off the CFCs that caused the 
problem also stand to gain from the alternative.  

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We weren't there yet in 1997 or in the nineties 
in general with renewables, with low carbon  

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technologies. By now, arguably we are by now, we 
live in a world where yes, heat pumps, induction  

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stoves and electric vehicles, renewables more 
broadly are fundamentally better. Technologies are  

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better technologically than what has come before 
and are increasingly the smarter economic choice.

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To wrap up this conversation away 
from rising climate change awareness,  

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how do you remember the nineties? How do you 
remember your teenage years and your youth  

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as a Xennials, and what do you think should 
be main takeaways for younger generations?

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I remember it as very analog, very offline, which 
is a silly thing to say in a world where frankly  

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there was no online yet. But basically that's the 
point. So I remember sending my very first email  

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to my parents while I was already in the us. 
That was in 1998. I was 18 at the time. Okay,  

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what does that mean practically for and nerd 
like myself, growing up in the nineties, it meant  

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books. It meant well spending lots of time outside 
and so on. It certainly didn't mean phones,  

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they didn't exist yet. And comparing that now 
to my 10 and now 13-year-old, we're frankly both  

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are literally the last people standing in their 
respective classes without a smartphone on them  

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at all times. And that's hard. That is very, very 
hard, right? So how do you protect your kid if you  

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will provide the same environment to them that you 
enjoyed growing up when there others are pointing  

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fingers at them and basically calling them out 
for being the odd ones out, for not having the  

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sort of technologies that everyone else has. And 
yeah, that's hard. I mean, actually what I often  

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do is there's this famous infamous story of Steve 
Jobs himself not giving his daughter a smartphone  

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until she turns 16 to basically point out that, 
yeah, this stuff is addictive. I don't want to my  

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kids to grow up with it. And I can tell you that's 
hard to tell your kids that, oh wait, there was  

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this one person once I remember from history, 
who is in a similar situation as you.

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Yeah, it's hard to resist peer pressure. I'm with 
you on this, but 16, nevertheless seems very old  

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for your first mobile phone access to the digital 
world. Now, Gernot, are you up for a Xennial quiz?

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Okay, so Gernot, what was your 
favorite album of the nineties?

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Okay, so that's a hard one. I may have 
mentioned I spent more time with books,  

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but I do remember being addicted to U2, 
being addicted to sort of the typical  

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pop songs on Austrian radio in this 
case. So yeah, I'll stick with U2.

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U2 is definitely a recurring 
feature of our quiz. Lemme  

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tell you your favorite movie of the nineties.

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That's easy. Life is beautiful, largely because 
that was the first movie I saw with my now wife of  

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22 years by now. So that was, I think in 97, 98. 
And yeah, that was my actually full disclosure.  

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That was basically my first date I ever went to. 
And yes, we've been married for 22 years now.

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Well, obviously it worked. Well done. But 
it is a beautiful movie indeed. It's very  

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emotional. Fantastic. Very, very powerful. 
Now your favorite book of the nineties.

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Okay, are you ready for this? So Nature's Numbers 
is the title. It is literally a National Academy  

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of Sciences report, just to give you a sense 
of the nerdiness of it all. So that was, again,  

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in early college years, so 98, 99, I think it 
came out the year before actually. But I ended  

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up spending three or four years of my life 
immersed in this topic. And it's basically  

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about green accounting. It's basically 
about, look, the way we count economic  

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activity. GDP is completely off. We've got to 
include majors, numbers, we've got to include  

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ecosystem services and so on. And yeah, that book 
comes with quite a few equations to go with it,  

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but I still have it. It's still on my shelf, 
very close to my desk at work. And yeah,  

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it's definitely, it wasn't just my favorite back 
then. It is still very much relevant to what I do.

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Fantastic. Finally, Gernot, 
one word to describe Xennials?

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Offline, analog. And I realize that's two words 
already, but whatever word might capture, well,  

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whatever word might capture precisely this 
idea of yes, of course connectivity is good,  

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technology is good. And yes, my kids have their 
email addresses and of course spend time online,  

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but you are basically taking a step back every 
once in a while. If it's a designated day on  

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the weekend, maybe were you literally fully 
offline, fully analog, and taking time to think

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Free Indeed. Gernot Wagner, thank 
you so much for your time. Thank you.

184
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Thank you.