One-on-one with Peter McKillop

Meet Peter McKillop, previously Managing Director at BlackRock and now founder and CEO of Climate&Capital Media. Together with We Don't Have Time, Climate&Capital Media are hoping to change how climate reporting is done in the media. Learn more about this approach and the benefits for a media company to interact with large groups of people in this episode of Climate Action News.

Transcript

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Welcome to Climate Action News, one on one brought to you by we don't have time. This new series focuses on partners and investors that are supporting we don't have time. And next to me here in the studio, I have a counter, it is counting down to 2030. And by 2030, we need to half our emissions in order to meet the Paris Agreement. And we are indeed running out of time because as you can see on the on the counter, we only have eight years and we know that for sure that it's very, very pressing times we have to get an action, more calls for action. And my name is Catarina Rolfsdotter Jansson I am the programme host. And with us today on this comet actually is one on one we are delighted to have Peter McKillop, who is founder of climate and capital media. And Peter is with us from New York City from lower Manhattan. And it's a pleasure to have his and with us pleasure to be here. Meet Peter McKillop. He's the founder and editor of climate and capital media, a media company that connects investors and entrepreneurs working on Global Warming Solutions. Their Global News Service develops engaging well reported profiles that deliver practical and meaningful investments and leadership insights into the fast growing community of businesses addressing global warming, and building a more sustainable global economy. This is combined with an actionable business director of the who's who of the company's entrepreneurs and investors working on these solutions. So Peter, let's start on a little bit of the the darker note on a darker to note here, in terms of fear, what what are your greatest fear is in terms of climate change, my greatest fear is kind of inaction, and the inability of countries and people to, in their own ways kind of recognise the issue and really begin to act on it. And I'm really fearful that if we get to 2030, and we kind of see the kind of stalling and talking that we've seen up until 2020, that we are really going to be it's going to be hopeless at that point. So to me, it's both an optimistic and fearful, I'm super optimistic, that won't happen. But there's an awful lot of centrifugal forces at work that would make it easy for major industries like banking and fossil fuels to to basically continue to kind of act without a sense of urgency. We're now in a pandemic, still Penn State. Would you see that there were any any writer, things coming out of the pandemic of learnings when it comes to Oh to climate? Absolutely. First of all, it was the recognition of a global problem, rather than a regional or country problem that to me, I think, is a very and that's both a good and a bad thing, meaning we didn't do a great job. But we at least recognise it has to be a global solution. You just can't have a pandemic in Africa and move somewhere else. That's one. The second is the speed to action once things started, Now, of course, they're going to be mistakes, and, and all that, but the way we were able to move on a vaccine is it was obviously very good. But the one big lesson, another big lesson is pandemic and climate are very different, there is not going to be a vaccine for climate. So in that way, climate is much more, it's much more severe issue and problem because we won't be able, like we have historically been able to win a war or provide a vaccine. So to me, that's the both the good and the bad of what we've learned from from from the pandemic. And I'm sure many of the viewers here have seen the, the sketch the drawing of the little hump. That is the pandemic crisis. And then of course, then comes the bigger, bigger, huge crisis of climate failure if we don't if we if we fail to act. Yeah. So Peter, your passion, you are very passionate about climate action. And yeah, where does it come from? Well, I think it came comes from the fact that I was a little kid growing up in Washington, DC and actually went to the first Earth Day, and at that time in the late 60s, early 70s, you know, parents and kids and everyone started to get very involved. And so to me, that's where it all started. I then worked for Greenpeace when I was throughout college. And so it's that passion has always been there, but it really accelerated when I after working, you know, at BlackRock on kind of some of their ESG funds and things like that and really beginning to understand and recognise the severity of climate. So that's the reason I decided that it was my time to really just devote the rest of my life to kind of helping solve it. And the best way I could do that is what I do best, which is kind of journalism and, and understand the financial systems. So Peter, tell us about climate and capital media. Sure, yeah, no. So it's a it's a new site. It's a new kind of media news operation. And what we started about a year, maybe about a year, it's really, interestingly enough, it all came to life, it really grew during the pandemic, because we were able to use technologies like we're using today. And we now have a kind of global team in Sydney, Nadella, you name it, things that we would have not been able to do a year ago. But the group in the team focuses on on really three things, themes, the big, broad, you know, mostly financial, economic, and social themes, the people who are driving the change, and the companies that are driving the change. And we try to look at we call it the emergence of a new climate economy. And to us that it's that is only a, frankly, a subset of the emergence of a new climate age. But within that climate economy, there's it's going to be such unprecedented change, that we really want to be able to capture and Chronicle that. So while we're more solutions focused, we're clearly going to dip into the kind of the nutty, the nitty gritty of challenges as well as similar to the way you set your site up with kind of mornings and opportunities. But that's kind of what we're, what we're trying to trying to do at climbing capital. So tell us about the response over this year on an in your from your news? Well, yeah, the response has been extraordinary. And what you're beginning to see who, first of all, it what's been interesting is, when you start a news organisation, you know, you're not expecting that people, you know, particularly leaders want to kind of engage with you, you're they'd rather deal with the New York Times or The Financial Times or whatever. But that's hasn't been the case, leaders, readers, everyone feels that they're making their time to meet and talk with us. And I think, you know, we're seeing a good growing readership. But we're really mean people want to talk about these issues. And they want to talk about kind of how they themselves are doing their best to kind of accelerate around around some of the big opportunities that you have in climate. Recently, just this week, Sky News launched the news that they're that they're actually doing climate news regularly. Yeah. What do you say about this? Well, I think it's happening everywhere. I think the you know, what was interesting, when we started, about a year and a half ago, almost no one was really focused on the business in the finance of climate, it was mostly around the environmental concerns and issues or the in that time, pre COVID, the big demonstrations, with with climate now moving to the centre of the economy, and the centre of investing, you're seeing, you know, an explosion of interest from news organisations, whether that's the Financial Times, or the New York Times are all it seems at every major news organisation is kind of doing their best to reorganise how they do it. Our goal at climbing capital is not to compete with those big, huge, massive organisations, but to really every week to put the put the climate kind of discussion within into context. What are the big themes that have been talked about for that week? You know, how do we, you know, Who were some of the players, and really kind of almost in the old days, it would have been the way a news magazine works, like their stern or something like that. It's an ability to look beyond the day to day of the news, and really kind of give our readers a relatively simple, easy way to kind of stay on top of kind of what is the tsunami of climate news? That seems to be happening every day? And where do you primarily your your readers come from? So the readers, interestingly enough, are mostly in the United States. And then we have a growing readership in Australia, India, and a little bit in Europe at this point, but we have very, very strong following in Australia. And Australia is a really interesting country is in many ways at the fulcrum of what of where countries need to go as the largest exporter of oil, coal and an LNG. There is a very, very big debate going on going on underway in Australia. So it's kind of an interesting country to be able to follow up. But yeah, primarily our readers are in the United States, but it's in India. We're starting to see some Australia and then Europe. And you recently started collaborating and you lost people, people powered news. This is a Yeah, go ahead. Together with we don't have time. Yeah, it's a great idea. And Ingmar and I were talking about how can we take some of the some all the great postings that the followers have, we don't have time hat and we said, Well, why don't We do this when when, when a certain article reaches a certain stage in popularity, let's just go out and do a story. So it's yet another feature of that, you know that you have many features as well, you contact companies you, you do but why not go once you know, why not have a legitimate article kind of come out and look at go deeper into the kind of concern or opportunity that's been posted. And to me, it's almost a rite of riches out there, there's so many great ideas that are being posted on we don't have time and both from a warning, but also from an opportunity standpoint. So for us, we were going to try to do at least two a month. And again, it's just going going a little further a little deeper into kind of the the the stories that or the ideas that are being posted on we don't have time, it's a great, I think it's a great feature. And it really to us, it's a I found it as a way of a tremendous source of fun thinking about new story ideas. And it also tells you what people are interested in versus kind of what you're interested in. Me I was so happy to to come across it because actually 15 years ago, together with another journalist I, I had a vision of creating something like this, but it was, well, I was our organisation was too small. And we were probably too early. But it was a grassroot journalism aspect that we wanted to launch globally. But now you you have it and it's it's connected to we don't have time. So it's fantastic. In terms of of this collaboration, you open yourself up all the platform we don't have time for, for climate dialogue. And please tell the viewers what that means to your organisation? Well, I think that what the one piece that we haven't talked about yet is what we call a climate Connect. And I actually think that the that the the new, the newest form of journalism that we're trying to approach is the connection, the convening, and the content. So those are the three big things that we want to do. And there, it's going to become more and more important to help people connect people, whether you're an individual or a businessman, or a regulator, or whatever. And one of the things that we want to build and work with, you don't have time with is this ability to bring us all together to connect individuals to connect as groups to begin to continue to think about ways that, you know, we're going to help each other to accelerate climate change. So that's the we haven't, you know, we're still very much in the development phase there. But that is kind of what what to me is going to really make us and frankly, we don't have time unique is that super climate focus, you know, the ability to share content, and, frankly, the ability to convene in both large and small groups. And I think you know, you guys are doing tremendous work on both the big conferences, but also the smaller convenings that we know that we have so sorry. Well, thank you. Thank you, Peter, in terms of response from your, from your readers, and what, what connections you have received on the platform in this dialogue processor, you share with us some news about this? Yeah, I mean, I think what we're seeing is the is kind of, you know, the obviously we follow closely the commentary from from the platform, the legs, what we're seeing, and I think this is what makes we don't have time really unique, is you get quadruple the response on a climate related issue, from the platform that you wouldn't get, say, with LinkedIn, or Facebook, that to me is really important. The other thing that's really important is you don't have to kind of reinvent yourself every single time you speak about an issue, there are certain things that generally a kind of, you know, is somewhat knowledgeable, we don't have time, you know, viewer or participant understands like the like the Paris Climate Agreement, I don't have to explain every time what the Paris Climate Agreement is. But to me, what's exciting is it's a smaller, it may be a smaller group, but it's a more engaged group. So you can very quickly feel that you're making a bigger impact than you would if you're using traditional social media. Peter, I started out by pointing to the to the character here, yeah, saying that we only have eight years until 2030. If you would just fly into time and land in 2030. What impact do you think media as in as in climate and capital media, but also a platform, a platform? Like we don't have time? What kind of impact has it had on where we will be 2030. So it reminds me a little bit of the early 1980s and the nuclear freeze movement. where, you know, at the early time for President Reagan became president, there was a real fear that the world was going to blow itself up. And there was lots of kind of talk on both sides, you know, the Soviet Union, and the US and What you saw there was this extraordinary kind of global movement to basically organise itself to send a very, very clear message, this is insane. We've got to do something different. And I think what we're seeing is something similar except this time, we have more tools, more ability to communicate, just in the idea that we could have had what we have now, a platform like we don't have time, or all the other things available to me, is what makes it different. But what's the same? Is this is this extraordinary? I did it. Just hundreds 1000s, millions of people are beginning to be aware, and they're beginning to kind of activate themselves. And I think the difference between then and now what is the technology is the speed. But I think the same idea that you can as large as a world where you know, people get together and change. And if you remember what happened then was By the mid 1980s, the Soviet Union, the United States came up with some very progressive, you know, arms control laws in Reykjavik and places like that. I think there's something very similar going on. Obviously, this is even more serious in one sense. But it's really the I think that ability for groups to work at the local level and to use platforms like we don't have time to get their content from us, that I think is going to just help us all, as we kind of organise kind of this global response to climate change. Well, thank you so much for those wise and inspiring final words. Peter mccaleb. We will continue working together and and making our voices and all other voices heard. Right. I think it Thank you very much. Yep. Good. Thanks for joining us on this on this accommodation is one on one. We have more interviews coming up. So please stay tuned and connect with us on we didn't have time and of course, give reviews, engaging climate dialogue if climate love climate warnings if needed, all the way don't have time platform. And check out this wonderful ideas with people powered news and follow that in this on this platform to so take care and we'll stay safe. Bye bye. And thanks