Carl Pope, Special advisor on climate to Bloomberg speaks to Blue & Green

In an interview with Blue & Green, Carl Pope, Special advisor on climate to Michael R. Bloomberg, speaks exclusively about progress on climate change. You can read the full interview here, but here are some selected highlights.

Pope told Blue & Green: “OECD countries must create the necessary financial architecture for trillions of dollars of investment to flow into resilient, low carbon infrastructure and clean energy in emerging markets and less developed economies.”

Underlining his point, China’s central bank deputy governor said on Thursday that his country needed to make $315 billion – $630 billion (£205bn – £410bn) green investments per year for the next five years.

Pope made the point that we need to change the language of the debate, so that: “a narrative of opportunity and prosperity replaces the outmoded Kyoto narrative of sacrifice and pain.”

On COP21 in Paris this December he was cautiously optimistic saying that it: “is likely to accomplish more to protect the climate than the previous 20 COP’s combined.”

Reinforcing his point about developing the conversation and language he stressed that: “climate progress is an opportunity, not a threat.”

And to make real progress we should start by: “getting rid of the artificial market barriers to the rapid growth of low carbon energy is at least as important (as carbon pricing).”

Read the full interview here.

You can read Carl Pope’s weekly column on Huffington Post here.