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Transcript: How on Earth: Christiana Figueres and Ross Garnaut on Climate Solutions Now

A full transcript of the event How on Earth: Christiana Figueres and Ross Garnaut on Climate Solutions Now, held on 13 March 2020 and available as a video and podcast.

Photograph of Andrew Wear, Christina Figueres and Ross Garnaut
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Andrew Wear

Good evening everyone and welcome to this special Wheeler Centre event, ‘How on Earth: Climate Solutions Now’. My name is Andrew Wear and I’ll be your host this evening, and thank you to everyone for bearing with us as we’ve responded to the rapid evolution in the coronavirus. Really, apologies for the late notice and the late cancellation, but public health does have to come first. And we’re really hopeful that this live stream will be a useful substitution for the event, so thank you.

What a fantastic evening we’re in for, the world is facing all sorts of problems, coronavirus amongst them. But tonight we are in for a big dose of optimism with some of the world’s foremost experts on climate change here with us tonight. But before we kick off, I’d like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we’re meeting, and recognise their continuing connection to the land, waters, and culture. I pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and to the aboriginal elders of other communities who may be here today, or watching with us at home. 

I would encourage everyone watching to tweet liberally throughout these presentations today, posting comments and questions, using the hashtag #ClimateSolutionsNow. That’s hashtag #ClimateSolutionsNow. And the speakers will address some of your questions later on. 

Some of you are probably wondering who I am. Why has the Wheeler Centre chosen me as the host for this evening? I recently published a book called Solved, which which addresses some of the big challenges facing the earth. And shows how some, how the many countries around the world are tackling some of the biggest problems. I discovered that Iceland is well on its way to achieving gender equality at work and at home. That the United Kingdom has reduced violent crime by three-quarters since the 1990s. That Singaporean students beat with almost all others in maths and reading. That South Koreans will soon live longer than almost anyone else on earth. That the US city of Boston, the epicentre of biotech, has the most innovative square mile on the planet. 

And I also discovered many countries are well on their way to addressing climate change. Denmark will receive, will achieve 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030. The UK is almost halved its per capita emissions over the last couple of decades. The solutions to many of our biggest problems do exist, if we look in the right places. And in the atmosphere of doom and gloom, there is a good reason to be optimistic. And tonight, with two of the world’s leading thinkers on climate change with us, there’s a good opportunity for us to explore some of those solutions. To provide us with a dose of optimism about our capacity to tackle some of the enormous challenges of climate change. 

Our first speaker is Christiana Figueres, who’s a Costa Rican citizen, and was executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change between 2010 and 2016. During her tenure at the UNFCCC, Ms Figueres brought together national and sub-national governments, corporations and activists, financial institutions and NGOs to jointly deliver the historic Paris Agreement on climate change, in which 195 sovereign nations agreed on a collaborative path forward to limit future global warming to well below 2%, and strive for 1.5 percent in order to protect the most vulnerable. Along with Tom Rivett-Carnac she’s the author of a recent book called The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis. Please welcome Christiana Figueres. 

Christiana Figueres:

Thank you, thank you. 

Andrew Wear: 

Thank you for being here. And our next speaker is Ross Garnaut, a professional research fellow in economics at the University of Melbourne. In 2008 Ross produced the Garnaut Climate Change Review for the Australian government, he’s the author of many books including the best-selling Dog Days of 2013, and his most recent book is Superpower: Australia’s Low-Carbon Opportunity. Ross thank you for being here with us tonight as well. 

Ross Garnaut:

Good to be here.

AW:

So first, firstly Christiana I was wondering, in your book you tell us that it is not too late, and there’s still time to stave off the worst effects of climate change. And you describe the next 10 years as the critical decade. Why is that? 

CF:

Well because that’s what science says, not that I have invented it nor has my co-author Tom. Science has been telling us, and in fact Ross has been telling us this in 2008, that we have been running out of time. And we have successfully denied, deluded, and delayed action on climate change to the point where we’ve basically painted ourselves into a corner now. And the fact is that we continue to emit so many greenhouse gases per person per country per year, that we are about to go over a very dangerous tipping point that would unleash a cascade of tipping points in several ecosystems from which we would never recover. 

And that would tip our global economy into completely unmanageable conditions, and humanity into uninhabitable conditions. So, before we do that, we actually have ten years. And over this decade, which you could either see as the critical decade or perhaps as the golden decade, depending on what our perspective you take, but it is the next 10 years that are going to decide whether we take the road of destruction, or whether we take the road of regeneration. And that is basically the choice that we are collectively making as we speak, and by 2030 we will know which road we chose. 

AW:

And what are some of those milestones in the way? You mentioned I think 2030, we need to reduce our emissions by half? 

CF:

Yes exactly. So by 2030, which is over the next 10 years, this decade, we will have to have removed or reduced our emissions, global emissions, by half compared to where we are today. 

AW:

And interestingly I think in your book you’ve suggested that for developed countries like Australia we should be aiming for more than that, perhaps 60 percent. 

CF:

Well the reason why we think it is both possible and fair that industrialised countries head for more than 50 percent, is because industrialised countries, firstly, from a moral point of view, certainly carry more of the historical responsibility than developing countries. Secondly, because industrialised countries have more resources at hand to invest into the technologies that are the technologies of the solution. And thirdly, because developing countries actually need a little more time to make the transition, and certainly, they need to make that transition to get their populations out of poverty, but that may entail a longer tail of emissions than can be controlled right now. 

If we got on with the job, moving quickly in the transition, we’d actually be better off economically.

AW:

Yeah. And one of the mindsets that you described in your book as being important to our creation of a better world is what you call ‘stubborn optimism’. What is that and why is it important? 

CF:

Well we have seen throughout so many years that we have been active on climate change responses that those of us who have been working on climate have made a huge mistake. Which is to focus on the doom and gloom scenario, on the very scary scenario that we could perhaps be facing, and not addressing or communicating in as compelling a fashion the huge opportunity that stands to be reaped by us. 

So we focus more on the threats of climate change, which are admittedly in a country such as Australia just barely coming out of the terrible bushfires, we know that consequences of climate change are really devastating. But, we have not focused as much on the opportunities that come with responding to climate change and moving to a clean, much more stable, safer, healthier economy.

AW:

Yeah. And Ross in your book you describe the economic opportunity than a low-carbon economy can bring to Australia. Does that mean Australia doesn’t have to choose between emissions abatement and economic growth? 

RG:

Well I have come to a conclusion now, and it’s a different conclusion than that which I reached 2,000 years ago because circumstances have changed. That if we got on with the job, moving quickly in the transition, we’d actually be better off economically. That statement is a statement about Australia, and not every country has the same opportunities in Australia. But we’ve got the best combinations of solar and wind resources in the world. We’ve got as good, probably better, opportunities for sequestering carbon in the landscape, especially in comparison with our population. Huge areas of semi-arid country that’s capable of holding much more carbon. 

That opportunity for capturing carbon on the landscape accompanies another opportunity to have access to low cost biomass, renewable sources of raw materials for plastics and chemical manufacturers that have much richer opportunities in other countries. So use these well and Australia has a lot of new areas of economic activity, economic competitiveness on a global scale. Use these well, and moving quickly to a zero emissions economy could see us with expanded prosperity. 

That’s not a conclusion I came to in 2008. And what has changed since then, most importantly, is that the costs of zero emissions, especially energy, but also a number of other industrial processes have come down far more rapidly than we expected. Whereas in 2008, the cost of solar energy was about ten times as high as the cost of coal alone for a generation plant. Today the cost of, the total cost of solar energy, capital cost and operating cost, is no higher in Australia then then coal alone for a coal generation plant. So in these new circumstances you’d have to deny the economics to decide to build a new coal generator. If you want low cost energy you don’t repeat the investment patterns in the past. And over the- 

CF:

From the point of view of those of us who are not Australian, actually it makes us quite jealous that Australia is so abundantly endowed with the natural resources that were the backbone of economic development of the last century. Abundantly endowed with fossil fuels. And, as though that were not enough of a privilege, Australia is also abundantly endowed with the natural resources that are the backbone of the economy in the 21st century. Now you tell me, which country in the world is actually sitting on a big nest of golden eggs in two centuries? With the, you know with the sources of power of two completely different centuries. It is very unique, very unique, and something that makes other little countries actually quite jealous. And I don’t think that it’s realised in Australia. I don’t think there’s an awareness of the fact that you had everything you needed last century and you have everything you need this century. Don’t you think that’s a little bit unfair? 

RG:

It’s a little bit unfair but it’s also unfair Christiana for you not to acknowledge another reality, that if the world doesn’t come to grips with this problem, Australia will be the country most damaged by climate change. 

CF:

Well that is very true, I hope that the bush fires have actually raised that awareness right? Because to argue, and Ross I would be very interested in hearing your opinion about this, but to argue that Australia only has 1.3 percent of global emissions and therefore has no responsibility, which in my mind means no opportunity to, to lower emissions just doesn’t cut it right? Because that’s not the point. The point is that Australia is highly vulnerable, exceedingly vulnerable, I would say just as vulnerable as the small low-lying islands for different reasons. And if Australia doesn’t participate in solving this problem, Australia cannot call on other countries to help solve the problem. And Australia depends on the collaboration of all countries to solve its own problem with vulnerability. So I totally agree with you that Australia really is in this amazing position of having everything to solve the problem and have economic development. And yet, it doesn’t seem to be a compelling enough argument.

RG:

It hasn’t been compelling enough to win the policy debates recently, but I think it’s broadly understood in the Australian community, I think there is a base of support for strong action in a in the community at large, and it’s something- 

CF:

Which is new? 

RG:

Yeah no not entirely. I think there’s been a failure of our democracy to accurately reflect the preferences of the community. Now the reason for that fact is rather complicated, and I’ve written a little bit about that, but flaws in our monopoly media, excessive influence of vested interests over the democratic process. When you’ve got the world’s best coal and gas resources per person, least in the developed world for gas as we have, you’ve got very big established industries who are prepared to invest a lot in the political process to make sure that we don’t act in the public interest for Australia. And that investment in distortion of those democratic processes has been very influential.

AW:

So Ross, much of the political debate in Australia in recent years in particular is focused on the transition costs to regional economies built on industries such as coal, coal mining for example. Yet in your book you describe the enormous  opportunity for regional Australia in a low emission  economy. Can you tell us a bit more about that? 

RG:

Yes, I’ve already mentioned that study has exceptional opportunities in a zero emissions world economy. Both in using low-cost energy to do energy intensive business, especially processing minerals. Australia is the main exporter in the world of the minerals that require a lot of energy to turn them into metals. But also the opportunity for sequestering carbon in the landscape, for using biomass as a base for industrial activities. It just happens that all of these activities would be in regional Australia. Rural and regional areas. So we do acknowledge that regional and rural Australia has done relatively poorly out of economic development in the last generation. This is a way of correcting it, making good use of our opportunities in the zero emissions world economy will disproportionately bring benefits to rural communities. 

I myself have interacted a lot with rural provincial communities as I’ve done the work on climate change in the last 13 years. Initially, partly because I was very much aware that a lot of the cost of adjustment will be borne by coal mining communities, coal power generation communities, which are in provincial Australia. But gradually I came to realise that even those places that currently get their jobs and their incomes from coal mining and power generation, have quite exceptional opportunities in the new economy. And so I’ve been working these last few years with a lot of those communities, with, early this week in central Queensland with leaders of the Barcaldine Shire. It happens to be the Shire in which you’ve got the world’s largest undeveloped coal resources in the Galilee Basin. There’s also the best solar resource in eastern Australia, and as good as any in the world. It’s the natural place to supply energy for a lot of the new industries that will be important if Australia grasps it’s zero emissions opportunity. 

CF:

You see, golden eggs everywhere. 

AW:

Yeah so climate change, both of you have really reframed climate change as an opportunity or at least something to be optimistic about. 

CF:

No, I think it is important to differentiate those two things Andrew. Climate change is undoubtedly the deepest and broadest threat to humankind, to flora and fauna. There’s no doubt about that. However addressing climate change, which is different from climate change, addressing climate change, taking advantage of these resources, developing the technologies, putting in place the policies that need to be made, and shifting the finance, that’s everything addressing. So it is addressing climate change that is a huge opportunity. It’s not climate change. And those two things need to be separated because otherwise, you know, we’re logically contradicting each other. We can’t say that climate change is both the greatest threat and the greatest opportunity, that doesn’t make sense. Climate change is definitely the greatest threat, but addressing it is the greatest opportunity. 

AW:

And does that require a change in mindset from where we’ve been?  

CF:

I think it does, well for the very reasons that Ross has just shown us right? If we obsess on trying to keep the economy and the technology where it has been in the past century, then we don’t open ourselves to the possibilities of the future. If we assume that everything that has gone in the past is determinant of the future then we stay in the tried and true and we’re not able to move forward. And so yeah, we talk about these mindsets, all of which have to do with moving from extraction to regeneration because it is no longer possible to simply extract, use, and dispose. We have to move to a very different economy of which the shared economy, and the circular economy, is a very important part. 

But understanding that we have, in this period in the Anthropocene period, which is the geological period that started in the 50s, we have destroyed so much that it is no longer enough to simply remove human pressure. It’s not enough anymore, we actually have to very actively regenerate and reinvest and re-fertilise those ecosystems that we have been quite, perhaps unintentionally but very decidedly, destroyed. Because otherwise we just don’t have the environmental context to be able to continue to prosper and thrive. 

AW:

Hmm. Ross, you focus on some very practical things you suggest the Australian government could do in the short term to set us on the path to net zero emissions. What are they? 

We actually have to very actively regenerate and reinvest and re-fertilise those ecosystems that we have been quite, perhaps unintentionally but very decidedly, destroyed.

RG:

I deliberately focused on things that do not contradict positions that the current government took to the last election. Now there are other things that will be very helpful but they’re not going to be done in this Parliament, and so in my recommendations I focus on the things that are consistent with the commitments, the electoral commitments of the current government. Well, in the energy area the transition to zero emissions energy, which I think, I think we’d be richer, have better employment and incomes if we went quickly to that, and I think we could go quickly but I suggest they’re doing more through established institutions, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and extending the mandate of these bodies to put resources into zero emissions industry beyond renewable energy, so you’re using the renewable energy in industry. 

We had a very important review of problems with the energy sector a couple of years ago by ACCC, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, they recommended for purposes of efficiency in the energy sector as a whole, not especially for clean energy, the underwriting of new investment of certain kinds under certain conditions that would have the effect of reducing some barriers to long-term investment in zero emissions energy. I think we could get in a long way without the government committing itself explicitly to favour renewable over established energy forms. I think our huge opportunities for sequestering carbon in the landscape need mechanisms for farmers and other people with responsibility for managing land in rural Australia, Indigenous communities with responsibilities for Native Title and in other ways. As well as farmers to have access to markets; if you don’t have an emissions trading scheme, if you don’t have a domestic market, if the government has to help the creation of markets,  we’ve got a base for that in the emissions reduction fund which the Abbott government established. 

The current government before the last election suggested putting in a couple of billion more, 2.6 billion more, into that by 2030. I’m suggesting put it all in now, in this parliament – that doesn’t actually couldn’t contradict any commitment. And then that will develop early momentum and then extend that by requiring our extractive industries to offset, their, what we call fugitive emissions, their emissions from LNG production or coal mining, by purchasing offsets from the farm sector, from the land sector, and so that would provide a market for continued sequestration and in the landscape. 

This last measure is being supported by some of our major LNG companies, who at a board level are recognising that we can’t just free load on the rest of the economy and and the rest of the world by releasing carbon dioxide from our activities without offsetting. So there’s a base for that, and I recommend in the book that we build on that base. 

AW:

So these are very practical ideas that are potentially politically acceptable to our current government. But Christiana whereas Ross focuses on these very practical ideas of working with the government of the day, you urge us all towards civil resistance along the lines of that practice by Extinction Rebellion. Why do you advocate that approach as opposed to..? 

CF:

I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. I think they actually have to go hand-in-hand. If you look at history you recognise that no major social economic or political transformation has ever occurred without civil disobedience. And when I say civil disobedience I’m talking about peaceful within the law demonstrations. So you look at women’s right to vote in the UK, had it not been for the suffragettes on the streets, it would have been going through still many years without women being able to vote.

Same thing with the civil rights movement in the United States; had it not been for mass demonstrations we still would have very different laws for many years after that. South Africa apartheid. So the transformation that is called for now is no smaller, in fact it is even greater than any of these three and many others that we have seen. And what the literature shows is that you don’t actually need a hundred percent of the population out on the streets on any issue. You only need three point five percent of the population, and then the politics switches. So all of the very practical suggestions that Ross puts forward need to have political support, because otherwise they don’t move forward. They don’t move forward on their own. If they did we would already have them. You need the political policy incentives in order to move them forward.

And in order to change the political landscape and be able to create the openness for that, you need public pressure which doesn’t need to be violent, in fact should never be violent, it should always be peaceful, it should always be within the law. But there does have to be, and I think the various different movements that are out there on the street, Fridays for Future being led by so many young women around the world, but other movements what they’re doing is they are changing the conversation. They are waking up people to the public opinion to both the urgency of addressing climate change, but also what they’re doing is they’re waking many people out of complacency and indifference because too many of us have been indifferent and complacent for decades, without putting any pressure on policy, or finance, or technology, or corporations. And so they’re doing both of these very important roles. They are waking up complacency and indifference, but they’re also raising the awareness and the consciousness of the public toward the change that needs to be done. So the two are not mutually exclusive. Just civil disobedience without the very concrete solutions brings us nowhere. And the concrete solutions need to be supported by public opinion. 

AW:

And do you agree Ross? Would you urge Australians to engage in civil disobedience? 

RG:

Well I think it does depend on the case, and does depend on the nature of the civil disobedience. I agree with Christiana’s view of the role of civil rights movement in the United States, and the resistance to apartheid. But Christiana if I can correct your history on women’s voting rights, sure without Emily Pencast and the suffragettes and severe disruption in London, Britain wasn’t ready to give votes for women. But more than a generation before America, more than a generation before Britain, our women had a vote through gentle democratic processes. 

CF:

Yes, and so it’s a very good clarification. Where the change does occur, then brilliant. And you know, women in my country obtained the vote also very, very calmly without having to go to that. But we have reached a point on climate change where we are up against the wall. And frankly none of those other issues that I have mentioned have the consequential impact that climate change, unabated climate change, has. And we are up against the wall. Had we started with all of these technologies decades ago, we could still afford the license, the luxury, of going around you know, in that wonderful Australian way, moseying our way toward the transformation that will occur anyway. The problem is, timing. Timing.

Addressing climate change is one of the 17 SDG’s which are the social development goals, sustainable development goals. All of those have a time in which we need to deliver them. It’s 2030. But none of them have a ticking bomb inside of them. None of them have the capacity to wipe off all of the advances that we have had – social, economic, political, human rights, all of those advances that we have had in the past 10 to 15 years, climate change, unabated climate change, can wipe all of that progress off. All of it. And that is not something that we can actually stand up for, so yes the technologies are absolutely critical and they’re concrete, and again Australia is unbelievably blessed with all of those, with all of those options that most countries don’t have. And, at the same time we have to be able to shift public opinion so that you can have the necessary political regulations, incentives, and measures put in place so that we do this transition in a timely fashion. 

AW:

And we do have a number of questions from the audience so I might get to a couple of those now if that’s okay. So this question is from Yasamin. What are the most impactful policies that a big city can implement to curb its emissions and make a dent in addressing the global climate crisis? 

RG:

Pick one, and I’d pick right at the moment in Australia, facilitating the electrification of transport. Especially private cars, but other forms of transport as well. And one very practical matter, making it easy to charge electric cars wherever people are as they go around their daily lives. So that would have a very big effect and that’s a local council responsibility in many respects. I would like high levels of government to support councils in that, but that is a city government role. 

CF:

And I would agree with that as long as the electric grid is clean. Because if the electric grid is not clean, and currently Australia has 60 percent of its grid is coal? Then we may be improving the local quality of life of a city, but if what we’re actually doing is using coal in the electric grid, then we’re not helping the global environment. We may be helping locally because what we would do is electricity would substitute liquid fossil fuels that are highly polluting, and that are killing seven million people around the world per year. So yes, it would be much better for local particulates that would not be in the air and wouldn’t kill our lungs, but we’re not doing well by global health. 

And so we have to be able to find the sweet spot between what are the measures that help the local quality of life of human beings, as well as the planet, the health of the planet. So I would definitely go with electrification in systems that have clean energy. And in systems that don’t have clean energy, I would actually go with everything that has to do with efficiency, because that is always the forgotten solution. We just waste an enormous, unordinary amount of energy and of money because we don’t have efficiency in all our systems. Heating, cooling, lighting, everything. So I would go first with efficiency. I would also go with greening cities. More and more to your point about landscape carbon absorption, I would definitely, and that is so easy to do, to put incentives into greening cities. And I would go with public transport, much better public transport, even if it’s still fossil fuel or even if it is an electric and coal base, I would definitely go to public transport because it takes some other smaller vehicles off the road. And let’s agree on moving quickly to zero emissions at the same time. 

AW:

Indeed, of course. Now Christiana, Jane Burns asks whether you have been asked by the Australian government to meet with them while you’re here in Australia. 

CF:

I have met with some members of the Australian government. 

AW:

Did you get a good reception?

CF:

Yes. 

AW:

Excellent, excellent. Alright one more question. It relates to coronavirus. If governments are struggling to deal with a big crisis like coronavirus at the moment, how will that impact on the ability to respond to an underlying long term, even bigger crisis like climate change?

RG:

Well coronavirus is going to give us a very difficult economic problem. It’s a very powerful recessionary influence and that’s a time when governments are going to be required to increase public expenditure and to provide incentives for increased private expenditure. This is actually a great time for big investment in the new economy, in the zero-emissions economy. A time when you get the additional benefit of acceleration of economic activity, so I’m not predicting that this will necessarily be a theme of stimulus packages, but it’s a time when it could be a theme and that would be really good economic policy, a really good response to the coronavirus impact on the economy, as well as as accelerating the transition we have to make. 

AW:

Would a deep recession impact on private sector investment that’s required to mitigate emissions?

RG: 

Private sector investment will come behind the transition if it’s profitable. And so this is a time when governments focusing on incentives for the right kinds of investment can get a very strong response because there aren’t competing uses of private and public investment.

CF:

I would totally agree with Ross on that one of course, because there is no comparison, nothing else out there that can be intelligently used as a global project to stimulate an economy that is either sluggish or dipping into recession. There’s nothing as powerful as first public investment and incentives and then pulling in the private to completely transform an economy and to be able to pull it out of where it’s going to be very soon, in the hole. And and you can compare it is, it’s a strange comparison but when a country has come out of a period of conflict or war, you always see the government moves in with major investments into public works that brings jobs, that brings stimulus, that really supports the activity of the private sector to bring the economy back up. And that’s always been done.

You see that across the board and this is the moment, as Ross says, this is the moment to make that investment. The longer we stay tied to the fossil fuel structure, the more expensive is going to be to pull us out. And to do so in a moment of economic abundance is not a wise thing to do. It is absolutely the perfect moment to do this when we are having a moment of, let’s call it, pre-recession. But we don’t know how long the pre is going to last, it is just the perfect moment. 

AW:

So we need an emissions abatement focussed stimulus package essentially? 

CF:

Well, I wouldn’t even call it the emissions abatement, I would call it welcome to the 21st century! The modernisation. What we need is to modernise, honestly you look at the grids here in Australia they all need to be interconnected, they need to be upgraded, they need to be smart. You look at energy generation that also needs to be modernised, you look at transport that also needs to be modernised. It is not just emission abatement, that is the negative way of looking at it. It is the investment into modern Australia, that is what is exciting. 

AW:

That’s that’s a great note to finish on, but I do have one last question for both of you. Do we have the solutions to tackle climate change, can we do it, and are you optimistic? Quick response Ross. 

RG:

Yes to the first, yes to the second, a qualified yes to the third. A yes depends on the effectiveness of our democracy. When I look at how we’ve handled big problems in the past, our democratic processes have been up to the challenge. I’m optimistic because I don’t think it’s yet beyond our democracy to meet the challenge. 

AW:

Christiana? 

CF:

Yes to the first, yes to the second, and to the third? Here’s the question: do we have any other option? And my answer to that is no. We do not have the option of not addressing climate change in a timely fashion. Because again the consequences are so dire that none of us want to have that on our watch, so I conclude yes to the third. 

AW:

Fantastic. Well that concludes tonight’s session. Thank you to the team at the Wheeler Centre. The Wheeler Centre is now 10 years old, a really integral part of Melbourne’s cultural life, the team here have done a great job responding very quickly to the challenges that we’ve faced. They have an impressive events program and in light of the current restrictions I’d urge you all to keep an eye on the Wheeler Centre website for further updates. And a reminder again too about the books by tonight’s authors.  They’re now all in bookshops, and if you are self isolating perhaps you can order a digital copy or order an online version. Or an audio book! So we have The Future We Choose which is Christiana’s book, Superpower by Ross and my book as well, Solved. Thank you all for tuning in, thank you Christiana, thank you Ross and I wish you all a good night.

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