In this episode, host Noah Rouse engages in discussion with Professor Michael Pollitt, Professor of Business Economics at Cambridge Judge Business School. They explore the intersection of faith, economics, and climate change, with Pollitt pressing the case for faith leaders to support economic solutions like carbon markets. The conversation touches on overcoming theologians’ misconceptions about market economies, the role of faith in historic social movements, and the potential for faith-based leadership to inspire action in addressing global climate challenges. Professor Pollitt emphasizes the need for a clear, unified ask from faith groups to make significant progress on climate policy, highlighting youth activism as a cause for optimism.

00:00 Introduction and Host Background

00:46 Guest Introduction: Professor Michael Pollitt

01:13 Professor Pollitt's Research Overview

02:09 Religion and Economics in Climate Change

04:45 Faith Leaders and Market Economists

05:37 Historical Precedents of Faith Movements

06:55 The Role of Faith in Climate Policy

08:24 Challenges and Opportunities for Faith-Based Climate Action

11:03 Uniting Faith and Secular Efforts

13:29 Hope and Solutions for Climate Change

16:17 Final Reflections and Hopeful Initiatives

17:48 Conclusion and Thanks

Hello, welcome to the next episode of the Interfaith Futures podcast. My name is Noah Rouse. I recently graduated from the Faculty of Divinity. I wrote my dissertation on the nature theology of St. Francis of Assisi and its relationship to Quranic ecology. And I've previously hosted the podcast Entanglements, which sought to explore how our society conceptualizes and interacts with nature.

I now work for a peace and reconciliation charity, St Ethelburga’s in London. I'm really honoured to be joined by Professor Michael Pollitt today. He is the Professor of Business Economics at Cambridge Judge Business School.

Professor Pollitt is also the assistant director of the Energy Policy Research Group and a joint academic director of the Centre of Regulation in Europe.

Thank you so much for joining us, Michael. I thought maybe we could just start with a brief recap of your research and the sort of things you've looked at previously.

So I've done a lot of work on electricity market design and increasingly I've got interested in how you regulate electricity markets and electricity networks in order to add high quantities of renewables to them. I'm very interested in carbon markets and their evolution around the world and written about the potential for a global carbon market.

And given my interest in Christian economics, I've got interested in the role of religion in addressing climate change and recently begun thinking about the need for a miracle if we're going to have a breakthrough on climate policy.

Fantastic. So maybe that's a great place to start if we think about how religion's relating to the current discourse.

I've seen you’ve written before that you think theologians might have some misconceptions about economics and about the markets. Do you want to just give a brief recap of how people talk about the market and maybe some misconceptions which are there?

I think a lot of theologians particularly in the UK and Europe are quite negative about capitalism and the market. And of course, that's a skepticism, which many people share. What I often point out to theologians is that Most economists don't spend their time thinking about the difference between capitalism and socialism or capitalism and some ism.

They spend their time worrying about market failures and how to correct them, of which climate change is classic market failure born of the need to price the climate and price clean air and our failure to do that. So I often find myself trying to point out to theologians that, we've got economic solutions, to some of the world's problems.

And that would be nice if theologians got behind some of the economic solutions rather than getting stuck with saying, “Oh, the problem is the system. And we need to change the entire economic system that we've got.”

So for instance, when the Pope was recently talking about climate change and what to do about it. He almost specifically ruled out carbon markets. He didn't like the idea of, putting a price on carbon because that sort of sounds like a bit of an indulgence towards people who are sinning in the area of creating more pollution.

But of course, as an economist, I find, I'm pointing out, look, there's only one viable solution to climate change, which is comprehensively pricing carbon throughout the economy and eventually throughout the world to such a level that people begin to use significantly less carbon in our economic system. One would like the Pope to support you in the use of good economic instruments, rather than to be working against good economic solutions.

I think something that comes up, I know for myself, and I imagine many people is the sort of sense that maybe markets aren't enough, or maybe trying to operate within the market is going to solve problems which are maybe deeper than the market.

And I think that's something that your research has touched on a bit, about particularly engaging faith leaders, and you've talked about some precedent in movements. What do you think, how do you think we can bring together faith leaders and market economists like yourself and have a more holistic bottom up view?

Michael 5:02

Yeah, look, I think that's a really good question. I think one of the important things about faith is of course it does raise questions which are often neglected in public policy and it raises the interests of marginalized groups who are often overlooked in policy. What I've done recently is thought about some of the sort of really interesting interventions where we've seen faith groups play a really, significant part in moving society forward.

And I think the problem in the climate space is, of course, a lot of people are concerned about the climate, a lot of faith groups are concerned about it, but actually it hasn't crystallized around a specific ask, it's a sort of a generalized request to do something. And actually, that is what has held up climate policy for decades.

The fact is we haven't implemented significant enough policies to move the dial. And we've not really moved the dial on reducing global emissions. And it is because none of the policies that we've had really are that significant at the global level. And what I'm suggesting is that faith groups need to get informed.

And the ask was clear. And when we went up to the G7 leaders, it was clear what they were being asked to do. And, in general, they did it at the time. So that's what I'd love to see about climate. I'd love to see faith leaders actually saying something like, we want a set of interconnected carbon markets which are all set up to deliver net zero by a specific day. And then we want to see those implemented across the world.

That's the sort of thing that I would like to see faith leaders getting behind. But of course, it could be other policies that add up. But that's what needs to happen. Otherwise, I think we're just part of the noise around climate.

I think it's really interesting what you're saying. And I noticed you're using the word ask a lot. People have often looked back to the past in order to look for the future. You've mentioned precedents such as civil rights movement or apartheid movements, very passionate and very, maybe not so much asking but demanding that challenging structures and challenging issues to be changed. If we need faith leaders to be involved in asking or challenging or demanding specific things, how do you think that happens within grassroots community? How do you think that people get educated in a way that is emotionally engaging and spiritually engaging, which is something that's maybe been left out or alienating people so far?

I think that's the difficulty, you're asking an economist that question. I think the thing I would say about faith leadership is that it doesn't necessarily have to be, religious leaders who are leading it. If you look to biblical precedent, one of the interesting things about leadership in, for instance, the Old Testament is that, it's the king who's leading who is also then a faith leader as . So actually, I don't necessarily think this is just about the leadership of faiths.

I think it's about people in leadership realizing that actually this is about changing, really changing, hearts and minds. It's about getting some miraculous breakthrough on this and it's about building a coalition of people that are actually willing to vote for change and for stopping pretending this is going to be cheap.

And this is actually going to be costly and it requires people to, put their money where their mouth is. So I think this is about faith based leadership in the widest possible sense, but of course it would be nice if the actual faiths got their act together on what they were really asking around climate.

I suppose that brings up interesting questions about secularization, and the state of our current Western world.

I think it does. But of course, again, Jubilee 2000 and those other sort of miraculous changes of published policy, yeah, they were faith led, but of course many people involved in them were just people of goodwill.

And I think climate is one of those sorts of issues, isn't it? The inspiration can be faith based, but of course there are loads of people of goodwill who would support something effective.

Yeah, I think that obviously statistics show that people do come together over a sense of fear and trepidation about the climate.

I'm really interested by that, because I think that brings up something about the maybe potential tension between, or not tension, but the potential and possible trade off between faith and action in some circumstances. You mentioned stuff being faith led or faith inspired but people coming on from other boards.

How do you think that people in religious communities who are led and guarded by their faith and by, yeah, the things that their faiths bring up, and love of the world, and love of God, how do you think those people can act in a way in which they're not seen as Christians who support the environment, Muslims who support the environment, et cetera, but seen as, like you said, good people with good intentions, who are able to bring together people and start quite a vitalized movement?

I think this has happened in many other spheres of public life, hasn't it? Both health and education have initially been championed by people of faith in all societies, they've set up schools, they've set up hospitals. But of course, over time, those things have become, things that secular people have supported and champion.

And I don't see any problem with in a sense, getting the buy in from people who are not of faith. I think one of the things that I've written about to do with climate change and faith is, I think that climate change should be one of those issues that unites if you like the evangelical wing of faiths with the social action wing.

A lot of faiths are characterized, aren't they, by the fact, there are people, there are some people who really motivated by the desire to convert other people to the faith and staying true to the doctrines of the faith?

It's good to have something that we can all agree on that. Yeah, this is something we should get behind. We're not going to do it on every issue. We don't need to do it on every issue. But this issue is important enough that it should unite evangelicals and social action people.

And of course it hasn't so far everywhere across the world, and, I know that a lot of work has been done trying to convince US evangelicals to get on board with the climate issue, but that hasn't been wholly successful yet. So there's work to be done within faiths to convince all wings of particular religions to actually support this.

I think it's also, drawing on things you previously said about conversations about climate change feeling and being very doom laden and very apocalyptic. I think the phrase you've written is that “it's using religious language, but not religious movements”. How do you think we can change the discourse around climate change from a movement of doom and despair to one which is more a movement of hope?

Yeah, I've used this in the context of, I think scientists in a sense have fallen into this trap, haven't they? That they've fallen into the trap of making it about, the facts are really terrible, we need to respond to them. And, the sort of clock getting closer and closer to midnight.

And of course the problem that science now has about that is we've gone past midnight, and people going it's too late to do something about it. So clearly the actual scientific community need to take seriously the need to actually motivate people to do something about climate change for positive reasons, and I think, again, this is somewhere where faith communities can really help because, we can make this about hope as well as the challenge of climate change, and also we can combine it with other issues that, we are only too well aware that, climate change isn't just about climate change, it's about the fact that poor people are disproportionately affected by climate change.

It's about the fact that the rich will be pretty okay, but the poor will not. It's about the fact that many countries in rich countries will not be as badly affected in relative terms as some of the poorest countries in the world. And these are things that religious people care about. We care about these sort of global justice issues and about all these associated issues with climate change.

And if we want to solve some of the world's problems, we should do something about climate change. And I think, part of the problem that religions often have is, why pick out this particular issue among many issues? And I think, one of the reasons to pick it out is because I think it does have a solution.

And just like the civil rights movement or Apartheid or the Berlin wall coming down, these are things that had solutions. And I think, we know what the solution to climate change actually is. The technologies are available. Imagine that we did actually have a global movement, which delivered on climate change, everybody'd be going, that's amazing. That, that's great, rather than some of these more, intractable problems which don't have easy global solutions.

And just as we come to an end, a final question is... I think you've written about, one of the things we need to do is pray because this would be a miraculous thing if we did have the technology and we had the reasons for technology.

And yeah, and maybe making it not just technology focused, but a holistic movement like civil rights were, like the end of apartheid was, a holistic movement in which it's not just saying this technology is solving it, but it's saying this is how we as a society are willing to take the costs and willing to change how we live as a group and not just individuals.

Just finally on a quick reflection on the theme of interfaith futures, is there anywhere you look and you personally feel hopeful? Do you think any communities are starting to do things right in a way that is going forward?

I think, I think we had our meeting in Cambridge where young people came together to talk about climate futures from a faith perspective.

I think there is a huge amount of goodwill out there towards this. And I do think that one of the things that has promoted climate policy is mainstream politicians being worried that young people actually take this issue really seriously, and that is one of the reasons why in the UK, mainstream political parties have all embraced climate policy. And so that must be something positive that we can harness, you know, a younger generation is really concerned by this. They are taking action towards it. So that I think that remains the most encouraging thing.

Thank you so much to Professor Michael Pollitt for meeting with me today and discussing interfaith futures. Thank you.

Thank you.