Beyoncé, inflation and the case for climate optimism

It's easy to feel doomed when it comes to climate change. In her latest book, the Italian political scientist Nathalie Tocci makes the case for cautious optimism about Europe's climate and energy policies. We chat to her this week about the opportunities and challenges of the European Green Deal, as well as how to interpret the death last week of Silvio Berlusconi. We're also talking about a push to ban unpaid internships across the EU, and whether or not we should be blaming Beyoncé for stubbornly high inflation in Sweden.

Nathalie is the director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome. You can follow her on Twitter here and find more information about her latest book, 'A Green and Global Europe', here.

We are over the moon that the animated version of our episode 'Mohamed', made with our friends at Are We Europe, has won a CIVIS prize! You can watch the beautiful animation here on YouTube.

This week's Isolation Inspiration: ⁠roasted fennel⁠ and 'The Council of Egypt' by Leonardo Sciascia. 

Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at ⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠ (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by ⁠leaving us a review⁠ or giving us five stars on Spotify. 

00:22 Amsterdam heat and breakfast tears
03:44 Good Week: Interns
10:49 Bad Week: Beyoncé
21:31 Interview: Nathalie Tocci on the case for climate optimism in Europe
36:32 Isolation Inspiration: Roasted fennel and The Council of Egypt
40:02 Happy Ending: (Everyone's) Free-To-Wear Sunscreen

Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak

Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak

Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina

Twitter | Instagram | hello@europeanspodcast.com

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

INTRODUCTION - 00’22”

KATY: Hello, Dominic. Hello, listeners. This is Katy, reluctantly reporting for duty from Paris. I regret to report that I am back from my trip to Naples and Sicily.

DOMINIC: Well, it sounds like the holiday brought you back grumpier than ever.

K: What's that supposed to mean?! You’re lucky there’s a podcast at all this week. Of all the holidays that I have ever taken in my life, this is the trip where if I really, really didn't want to come back, Dominic.

D: Oh, I'm sorry for you. And like, totally – well, no, actually, I'm not sorry for you.

K: Oh.

D: I was stuck here in the Netherlands, which actually was the warmest place in the whole of Europe since we last recorded, for a few days. Which I felt like I just had to say, after you were mouthing off about how awful the weather is here all the time. And actually, I wanted to point out that we've had a drought for a month, so there's been no rain. So, ignoring the climate apocalypse for a moment, I just wanted to say, ha, you're wrong, it's not raining all the time.

K: I stand corrected. I knew I'd live to regret that comment.

D: It is now raining, fortunately, which is quite a relief from my garden. But how was the holiday? 

K: Ah, I mean, let's just put it this way: I cried over breakfast one morning because it was so good. It had homemade ricotta, and fruit from next door, and honey from the neighbours. And the woman from the pensione, this kind of inn where we were staying, she said, ‘You know, it just makes me so happy to see you this happy with your breakfast.’ And I started crying! I got a bit hysterical.

D: Oh dear!

K: But apart from that it was great. I spent the entire week eating and swimming, mostly.

D: It sounds perfect. You were in Naples and Sicily, right?

K: Yep. And I ate many things in both places. Before we get stuck into this week's episode, I wanted to mention that it has been a doubly great week after my holiday, because while we were on a break, we won a big prize, hooray!

D: Yay!

K: We are over the moon that the animation version of an episode that we made last year, ‘Mohamed’, made with our friends at Are We Europe – it picked up a very prestigious German media prize, the CIVIS Prize. And we got to see Mohamed himself and our producer Katz on German television. It was a really, really proud moment for our team.

D: Yeah, I may not have cried over breakfast, but I did shed a tear while watching Mohamed and Katz accept that award. It was really moving to see that all that hard work has paid off. So yeah, congrats to everyone involved, to Mohamed, Katz, Mélody. And thanks to the Allianz Foundation as well for cooperating with us on this project – it wouldn't have been possible without them.

K: If you haven't seen this beautiful animation, it is of course well worth your time. It is award- winning, for goodness’ sake! I'll put a link in the show notes. But let's dive into this week's episode. What are we talking about this week?

D: Well, this week we're going to be taking a kind of optimistic view at Europe's possible green future and speaking to someone who thinks that the transition away from those dirty fossil fuels is exciting. Nathalie Tocci, political scientist and director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, will be joining us later from Rome. But first, it's time for…

GOOD WEEK - 03’44”

D: Tell me, Katy, who's had a good week? Apart from you.

K: Apart for me, I'll stop rubbing it in now. I'm giving Good Week to interns, because of a call from the European Parliament for new legislation to ban unpaid internships across Europe once and for all. A lot of people listening to this will be familiar with this miserable and exploitative practice, because it's sadly common in a lot of different industries. We all know the story: young people are generously granted entrance into a workplace so that they can get some valuable experience and an impressive looking thing to put on their resumes and contacts within their chosen industry. But often they end up doing actual work for free – frequently boring work – that they should absolutely be paid for. These unpaid internships also, of course, often have to take place in capital cities where our biggest companies and institutions are based. So loads of them are only accessible to people who have family or friends in these cities so that they've got somewhere to sleep. You also have to be able to exist without paid work for multiple months while you're doing the internship. And since the people who do these internships often end up getting a foot in the door and an entry into their chosen career, the whole practice reinforces social inequalities in all kinds of depressing ways. Lots of people would like to see unpaid internships banned, myself included. So I'm really happy to see the European Parliament taking a step forward on this. They haven't asked for anything super specific so far, just for internships that are, quote, adequately compensated. So at a minimum, they would have to cover food, housing and transportation costs, taking into account the cost of living depending on the EU country that the internship is in. They also called for internships that are more accessible for people with disabilities, and more cross-border internships too. I should clarify that the European Parliament talks mostly about traineeships rather than internships, by which they mean internships that can last for like months or months, maybe up to a year. But we're talking roughly about the same kind of work here, for people who are typically fresh out of school or education and just starting out on their career path.

D: I’ve got a nerdy question. You said the European Parliament have, like, proposed this law. But isn't it normally the European Commission, so like the executive body, who come up with the laws, and then the European Parliament decide whether or not to support them?

K: I'm so proud of you for asking that, Dominic, we've come so far in five years of making this podcast.

D: Thank you!

K: Yeah, so typically, the European Commission has to be the institution that comes up with the idea for the law, and then it kind of ping-pongs around and then it gets passed. But the European Parliament voted last week for something called a Own Initiative Report. And what that basically is, is a thing that allows them to formally ask the Commission to draft a law on a specific issue. The Commission isn't obliged to draft that law, necessarily – it has three months to say whether it's doing it or not. And if it decides not to do it, it has to say why it's not doing it. So this thing that the MEPs voted for last week, it isn't 100% definitely going to result in unpaid internships being banned by a new European law. But it does create a good chunk of extra momentum for a law of that nature. And I can't speak for the Commission. But the MEPs themselves seem to be fairly strongly behind this. 404 of them voted for this request for new legislation, with only 78 of them against, and 130 abstaining. So, pretty decent turnout.

D: I have to say, I'm not that surprised that this bill has come up because when we were in the European Parliament a few months ago, do you remember, for this event called Level Up that was organised by the European Youth Forum – already, back then, the Youth Forum were lobbying hard to ban unpaid internships. And I remember it was one of the things that got like the biggest applause from all the young people in the room. And I thought, ‘Oh yeah, this would be a clever policy for some politicians to take on.’ So I'm glad they were listening.

K: Yeah, absolutely.

D: But what's the downside to this? Like, why wouldn't politicians support this bill?

K: Well, only a minority of MEPs did vote against it, and they were mostly right-wingers. One far-right French MEP, Dominique Bilde, told the Euractiv news website that she thought this was yet another example of the EU overstepping its responsibilities and trying to make laws on things that should be up to individual nations to decide. But otherwise, the support for this idea was pretty cross-party. Although, the centre-right bloc, the European People's Party, they did something quite sneaky: they largely spoke out in favour of good quality internships for young people, but then they put forward this amendment suggesting that the Commission shouldn't be asked to come up with actual legislation on this, just recommendations. So they were trying to water down a bit. But the amendment failed, ha! So it looks like the Commission is either going to have to come up with a plan for a new law on this, or a good reason not to.

D: I've said this before, but how can the European People's Party be called the European People's Party? The people don't want unpaid internships, surely?

K: Yes, they do, apparently….!

D: Does the European Parliament pay its interns?

K: It does now, yeah, as of mid-2019. But that followed quite a lot of pressure for the EU to start leading the way on this, because its own institutions have historically been pretty bad offenders in terms of exploiting young people hungry to get a foot on the career ladder for little or no pay. And even though the parliament’s traineeships are now paid, you still hear complaints all the time about junior staff’s working conditions, and precarity, and having to work on really short-term contracts, not enough pay… Across the EU as a whole, unpaid internships are still super common, and super costly for the young people doing them. As you say, the European Youth Forum have been lobbying massively on this and they actually published a big study on internships this January. And they found that the average young person doing an internship somewhere in the EU has to spend more than 1000 euros a month just on basic living expenses, when you include things like housing in the city where the internship is. So of course, it's pretty difficult to have access to that kind of opportunity unless you have family support, or savings, or some kind of other financial good fortune. Most people that they surveyed, 68% of young people, said they couldn't afford to do an unpaid internship in the next six months. So if you think about the kinds of industries where we have a mysterious lack of diversity – politics and the media, just to give a couple of well-known examples – it seems pretty clear that banning unpaid internships would help to fix that diversity problem. So we will see. The ball is now in the European Commission's court, and we should know within the next three months, whether they're actually going to propose new law on this or not.

D: Exciting.

K: Very exciting. Who, meanwhile, has had a bad week?

BAD WEEK - 10’49”

D: Well, I want to do things a bit differently this week and start with some poetry.

K: Oh!

D: ‘Can you pay my bills? Can you pay my telephone bills? Can you pay my automo’ bills? If you did, then maybe we could chill.’ So sang Beyoncé with her colleagues of Destiny's Child - 

K: Colleagues!

D: – back in 1999, in the song ‘Bills, Bills, Bills.’ Sorry… 

K: You've been looking forward to this all day, haven't you?

D: Yeah, I have. And the reason why I'm quoting these lyrics to you all today is because I am very reluctantly giving Bad Week to Beyoncé, because she's been accused by some experts of contributing towards stubbornly high levels of inflation in Sweden. And those bills, bills, bills are just not going down. And honestly, I can't believe I'm giving Beyoncé Bad Week for anything, and I'm probably going to be expelled from the Beyhive. But I saw this story about Beyoncé and inflation, and I just couldn't resist talking about it.

K: It's literally your dream story. It's a combination of Beyoncé news and nerd news. I'm so happy for you.

D: I know! Thank you.

K: But is this actually a serious news story? Like, is it really possible that inflation in Sweden is Beyoncé’s fault?

D: Yeah, that was my question. When I saw this headline, I thought, this is clickbait. And maybe it is in part clickbait, but it's clickbait that I'm totally here for. And it all comes down to this huge tour she's performing all across Europe at the moment, the Renaissance tour, which is actually in my city of Amsterdam this week, and I had massive FOMO even though I've actually already seen it because I took the pilgrimage down to Brussels to see her some weeks ago. But the tour actually opened in Sweden in Stockholm on the 10th of May. And there was a huge amount of international attention and buzz for the start of the tour, which some predict is going to be the highest grossing pop tour of all time.

K: Wow.

D: Any guesses on who currently holds the record for highest grossing tour? I can give you a clue, it's a Brit.

K: Oh! Er… Adele?

D: No, it's Elton John. He currently holds the record, having generated $853 million for his farewell tour. But estimates suggest Beyoncé could generate up to $2.1 billion in ticket sales for her tour – 

K: Jesus Christ. 

D: – even though she is doing many, many fewer dates than Elton did. So perhaps it's unsurprising that eventually there would be a discussion about Queen Bey’s impact on an economy. But I was still surprised to hear that she was being accused of impacting a whole country's inflation level, so let's have a quick look at the figures and see exactly what she is being accused of. Sweden's inflation, as measured by the consumer price index – so this is that measurement that looks at prices that private domestic consumers are actually paying for typical goods they might buy – that dropped for the first time in May, which is the month that Beyoncé was in Sweden, to just below 10%. The first time it's gone below 10% in six months. The inflation rate was at 10.5% year-on-year in April, and it dropped to 9.7% in May.

K: So it's going down! Leave Beyoncé alone!

D: Well, that's exactly what I thought. But the thing is, inflation had been expected to drop quicker in May. And if you dig deeper into the stats, you could see where Beyoncé might come into the picture. Because whilst overall inflation went down, when you look at hotel and restaurant visits, recreational services and clothing, for example, they all saw an increase in inflation compared to April. And who needs to visit a lot of hotels and restaurants and buy new clothes? Apparently people who are going to see Beyoncé.

K: Do they need new clothes? Why haven't they got clothes?

D: Yeah, I didn't buy new clothes to see Beyoncé, but maybe I should have.

K: Maybe if you had done she would have seen you in the crowd and been like, ‘Who is that beautifully dressed fan? Come on up here! And things could be really different right now.’

D: I told you I have a recurring dream that I'm friends with Beyoncé, haven't I?

K: Oh, that's really sad.

D: Anyway, it's not just anyone who is throwing around these theories of the Beyoncé inflation effect. Michel Grahn, who's the chief economist for Sweden at Danske Bank, said in a post online: ‘Beyoncé’s start of her world tour in Sweden seems to have coloured may inflation, how much is uncertain.’ He went on to guess that it probably had an effect of between 0.2 and 0.3% in extra inflation – maybe not so much, but it's still extraordinary. Also, considering only around – I say only, but only around 46,000 people attended each of the two concerts she did in Stockholm. And for a country with a population of over 10 million, I would have thought that 92,000 people isn't so many people. But it was probably also a factor because many of these people had come to Sweden from abroad to see Beyoncé, and even amongst the Swedes that attended, many came from outside Stockholm. So hotels in particular were very busy and prices clearly rose over those two nights.

K: Is there any reason why so many people went to Sweden in particular? Was it just because they wanted to see the start of the tour, or is there some other reason?

D: Yeah, I think that was part of it. There were loads of super fans that wanted to be there for the beginning of it. And she'd never performed any of the tracks from her latest album live, and it was almost a year since it had come out. But it was also helped by the fact that ticket prices were cheaper in Sweden than many of the dates elsewhere on in the tour, especially compared to her US leg of the tour where tickets are quite a bit more expensive. And that was helped by the fact that the Swedish krona is quite weak at the moment compared to many other currencies. Anyway, the good news for Swedes is that Beyoncé won't be affecting their inflation rate anymore. Her two gigs in Sweden are done and Michel Grahn at Danske Bank said that the upside was that the increased hotel prices are expected to fall back down to where they were immediately. But a forecasting economist at Swedbank told the Financial Times that there was a possibility that Bruce Springsteen's three gigs in Gothenburg at the end of this month could have a similar inflationary effect.

K: Interesting. I hope he gets just as much flack for this as Beyoncé, otherwise it's sexism.

D: I hope he does too. But look, obviously this Beyoncé story is a bit of a distraction from the much more serious story that is the continuing cost of living crisis that is affecting Europe right now, thanks to months and months of consistently high inflation. If we stick with Sweden, to put this crisis in context, they hit a 30-year high of inflation in December when inflation rates reached 12.3%. And it may be fun to point the finger at Beyoncé for inflation, but I should make it very clear that the main drivers of this extraordinary and persistent inflation have nothing to do with Beyoncé. And in Sweden, some have criticised the Swedish central bank for being one of the last central banks in the West to raise interest rates – they kept their rates at zero until May last year. And their rates are now at 3.5%, which is on the lower end of European interest rates right now, despite the fact that Sweden, in May anyway, was on the higher end of inflation in Europe with that 9.7% inflation compared to the European Union average of 7.1%. You all thought this was gonna be fun, and now I'm just listing inflation rates. Anyway, we probably mainly all know some of the non-Beyoncé reasons for why inflation has been so high recently. But just a reminder, because I feel like it's only fair to Beyoncé to mention those. They include soaring food prices due to extreme weather conditions – thank you, climate change; labour shortages and an inflexible labour market – thank you, pandemic; and unstable energy prices. Piss off please, Vladimir Putin.

* * * 

K: People often complain that Dominic and I are too British in the way that we feel obliged to be self-deprecating and apologetic all the time. So today I'm going to do something brave and very un-British and boast for a second, and tell you that I think we make a really good podcast on an absolutely miniscule budget each week. I will go so far as to tell you that I think this is the best podcast available in English about Europe, despite the fact that it has no backing from a major media outlet. And we're actually really proud that our podcast is 100% independent, but it does mean that we are constantly short of cash and never really sure whether we're going to be able to carry on making it from one year to the next. So if you would like to help us make sure that this podcast can stay in your ears each week, we will be incredibly grateful if you could chip into our fund via Patreon.com so that we can pay ourselves and our producers to keep making The Europeans.

D: Yes, you can donate as little as two euros a month. So if you have any spare cash, please do head to patreon.com/europeanspodcast. This week, we'd like to send our thanks to our newest supporters: Luisa, Ana, Joseph, Alina, Iveta and E.A. And thanks also to the following longtime Patreon supporters who have increased their pledge over the last few weeks, which is amazingly nice and helpful! Thank you Marco, Marijn and Polly.

K: And, super-fan of The Europeans Anne-Sophie, we have a birthday gift for you from your friend Lisa. She has gifted support this podcast to you! Happy birthday for Tuesday.

D: Happy birthday!

K: Are you gonna sing, Dominic?

D: No. 

K: Okay, good, let's move on. Great birthday gift. Lisa, I thoroughly encourage people to gift support of the podcast to people who love the show.

D: Happy birthday, Anne-Sophie!

INTERVIEW WITH NATHALIE TOCCI - 21’23”

K: It's quite easy to feel doomed, a lot of the time, about climate change and the extent to which people with power are doing enough about it. Including here in Europe, despite the fact that European leaders often like to think of themselves as world leaders when it comes to making the planet a greener place. But I do think it's worth considering the case for optimism from time to time, if only as a brief break from the mental toll of reading endless headlines about how well and truly screwed we all are. And one person who makes an eloquent case for optimism when it comes to Europe's climate policy is the Italian political scientist Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Instituto Affari Internazionali in Rome. Her latest book is called ‘A Green and Global Europe’. And it's not optimistic in a, ‘everything's gonna be fine, stop worrying’ kind of way. She's really clear about the challenges that we face. But she's nonetheless an optimist when it comes to arguing that the European Green Deal, this huge batch of policies that's supposed to make the EU climate neutral by 2050, she argues that there's a bunch of stuff to celebrate within this deal and a bunch of opportunities too. And we thought you all deserved to hear a dose of that optimism this week, so we gave Nathalie a ring in Rome.

D: There is so much to talk about the cost of the ongoing energy transition away from fossil fuels. But you argue for the potential strategic and economic benefits for Europe, if they take the plunge and move assertively towards a future that makes Europe properly green. Can you give us a brief outline of how you imagine this will work?

NATHALIE: Let me start with perhaps a little bit of context there. Because when Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, there was quite a strong sense of fear in some quarters, scepticism, concerning the fact that Europe would basically sideline its green agenda, its energy transition agenda, because energy security was back. And I must admit that deep down I was a little bit worried about this as well. I actually did think that yes, indeed, of course, we have to talk the talk about the fact that, you know, energy security and energy transition are actually complementary. But is it actually going to work in practice? I mean, are we actually going to sideline the European Green Deal? And I think, you know, it's actually really quite encouraging to see how, you know, almost a year and a half on from that moment, the European Green Deal has not been sidelined. And if one actually does look at what has happened over the last year and a half, there has been a very significant uptick in investment in renewables, there has been the completion of a legislative agenda that basically sets Europe on the path to decarbonisation. So all of these things have actually been done. And as a consequence, Europe's energy security has actually been strengthened. I mean, it's really quite remarkable how over the course of a year and a half, our energy dependence on Russia, that was, you know, hovering around 40%, has basically plummeted to below seven percent. The fact that Russia eventually did turn off, or almost turned off the taps did not kind of project Europe in a catastrophic economic recession. Yes, obviously, there was a peak of the energy crisis. But a year and a half is not a long time. And I think, you know, we've weathered the storm remarkably well. Essentially, I think what this points to is, on the one hand, the interruption of weaponisable dependencies, which have been brown dependences, ie the one on Russia. Secondly, a diversification towards other suppliers. And here I think the real question is, what do we need to do to ensure that those relationships with the Algerias, Azerbaijans, Angolas, Mozambiques, Egypts, Libyas – you know, Qatars of this world, progressively become greener over time? I mean, at the moment, they're very brown. And then there's a question of Europe's own domestic strength and domestic industrial strength. Basically, Europe does have the potential to develop, in a sense, a green European energy system in a way that was not really possible when it comes to brown.

K: Having said that, it doesn't always feel like we're on a trajectory of universally good news when it comes to climate policy in Europe. Just this week, for example, Poland has been generating headlines by pushing for more subsidies for coal. You were fairly optimistic when you published your book nine months ago. Are you still as optimistic as you were nine months ago? Or do you see some reasons to sort of moderate that optimism?

N: Well, what's very clear is that there is political pushback. And we've seen the pushback coming from all sorts of different quarters. Indeed, you know, the news now is on Polish coal subsidies and whether that should be exempted or not. There has been pushback from Dutch farmers against targets that are considered too stringent on nitrogen emissions. There has been pushback on combustion engines, too. You could interpret all of this as being bad news, right? You can also interpret it in an almost diametrically opposite way. When the energy transition, when climate policy was abstract, frankly speaking it was easy to agree on it. It didn't imply any costs for everyone. And then, who wants to be brown? I mean, it's kind of, you know, it's cool to be green, right? And then the process becomes real. We call it a transition. But in many respects, it looks more like a revolution, considering how much change needs to happen and the speed at which it needs to happen. And a revolution or in fact, a transition for that matter, involves winners and losers. It's normal, it's natural, that the losers are going to start making their voices heard, because now the process is real, change is real. So if that pushback basically becomes strong enough to halt the process, well obviously, it’s bad news. If that pushback is the evidence of change, and to that pushback there are then responses that basically can include forms of compensation… You know, it won’t be a linear process, it won't be, you know, exactly the implementation of a plan as one forsees it, because politics is politics. The point is, does the direction of travel remain in the right direction? And secondly, does it slow down the speed? There may be some detours along the way, but that doesn't worry me too much.

D: You were talking about winners and losers. And I was wondering, is there a danger that if Europe gets ahead with decarbonising our economy, that global inequality could increase – that the parts of the world that cannot afford to decarbonise get left behind? What can we do to avoid that?

N: Well, the easy answer is a lot more money. But I think this inequality point has two dimensions to it, because you can talk about the risk of growing inequalities both within Europe and between Europe and other world regions. And in a sense, it's the same problem internally in Europe. There is an issue of, you know, how to compensate for the coal workers as opposed to those that can't afford electric vehicles, or can't change their boilers at home. And inevitably, those that are less equipped basically to face that cost need to be compensated. And then, you know, in a sense, mutatis mutandis, it’s exactly the same argument that applies globally. So not so much within countries but between countries, you know. How do you address that problem? I think partly you address it basically by recognising the fact that the transition will take different shapes and forms and paces, really, in different parts of the world. And so Europe should not approach this question as assuming that it has the solution to the problem. It has its own European solution to the problem. And what it has to do is engage with others to try and see how it can support others’ path to transition. Again, it has to do with money. Much in the same way as we have to compensate for the losers at home, we have to compensate for potential losers or those that are inevitably slower in the process globally as well. Now, if you look at the story of climate finance, basically it's a story in which Europe continues to be ahead of others but frankly speaking is the best of a very bad lot. We are nowhere near, globally speaking, the 100 billion per year that we had promised back in 2015 as part of the Paris Climate Agreement, the pledge that we had made in terms of climate financing today, both climate mitigation and climate adaptation. We still, eight years on, haven't reached that target. And we already know that that target is way below what is actually needed. So essentially, it's a story about a lot more funds, both internally and externally. Given that these funds can not all come from public budgets, there is still the question of, how is it that private capital can be leveraged more and better and to the right parts of the world? Basically, in order to ensure that the necessary climate finance is delivered.

K: Even if there are our strategic opportunities, economic opportunities for Europe with the European Green Deal, it does look like the world will reach the dreaded 1.5 degrees of warming really very soon, perhaps in the next five years based on the latest estimates. Aren't we just out of time? Is all of this just happening too late?

N: Well, two reflections on this. Firstly, I think that's almost a fact, right, that there's going to be an overshoot of that 1.5 degree target. But comment number one: 1.5 is better than 1.6, that is better than 1.7, that is better than 1.8. And so I think we should be extremely wary and careful not to give in to this kind of catastrophic reading and basically saying, ‘Well, you know, given that we've missed the 1.5, mark, we may as well just kind of, you know, throw in the towel and give up.’ So that's in a sense, first reflection. The second is that precisely because there is going to be that overshooting, most likely I think that we have to actually start thinking far more and far more carefully and invest far more on carbon removal technologies. Unfortunately, it is not enough simply mitigating and reducing the emissions, we have to invest a lot more in actually taking that CO2 out of the atmosphere. If there is a period of overshooting, basically, we try and compensate for that and kind of row back as quickly as possible to a more sustainable situation.

D: Before we let you go, we couldn't speak to you without asking you briefly about how you are reflecting on the death last week of Italy's most notorious politician, Silvio Berlusconi. How is the news going down in Italy? And will his death have any real-world political significance, seeing as he was leading a party that were coalition partners in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government?

N: The slightly kind of schizophrenic situation that I think has kind of played out over the last few days is the real difference in the debate here in Italy, and in the rest of the world concerning Berlusconi. Internationally, Berlusconi has been associated with the sex scandals and the corruption and basically legitimisation of populist politics, which then led the way to the Trumps and the Bolsonaros and, you know, the Boris Johnsons and all the rest of it. And the really weird, frankly speaking, debate here in Italy, that has almost elevated him as some sort of national hero. The fact that he died now that there is a, you know – one keeps on saying centre-right, but I think in many respects, it's more accurate to say a hard-right government in Italy has been in many respects, a real blessing. I mean, you know, no other government would have basically given him the treatment that he's been reserved over the last week, you know? Technically speaking I think we're actually still in a national mourning that lasted for a week. It is true that Silvio Berlusconi has been the most influential politician in this country. For the last 30 years, politics really revolved around him. So in this respect, he was a defining figure, basically, in Italian politics, the one who legitimised the entry of the hard right in government. Fratelli d’Italia, Giorgia Meloni’s party, you know, a previous incarnation of it was a junior partner in a Berlusconi government. And so in a sense it’s really not that surprising that you would have these people talking about him and then elevating him to the role he's been given over the last week. So I think this kind of talks about a deeply polarised country. And as for the question, you know, what are the shock waves that this is likely going to have onto the government itself? I actually at the moment don't see many of them. I think it will really take time to see how this plays out. And eventually, if they will, Berlusconi’s party will eventually disappear, or rather collapse into Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s party. And if that will then eventually mean a further moderation of Giorgia Meloni, that becomes the heir of Berlusconi or not, I think that's all very much still up for grabs at the moment.

K: Thank you so much to Nathalie, for joining us. Nathalie is one of those rare people who is able to zoom out and look at the state of this continent in a really insightful way. And I really enjoy reading her thoughts on everything from the environment to what is happening in Eastern Europe. Her Twitter account is a great place to stay up to date with her various writings; you can find her @NathalieTocci.

ISOLATION INSPIRATION - 36’32”

K: What have you been enjoying this week?

D: I've been enjoying fennel.

K: Oh! Okay. 

D: I'm talking about it because it's kind of news for me, because I've long been quite sceptical of fennel. I'm really not a fan of licorice-y flavoured foods. But recently I was given a fennel as part of one of these Too Good To Go bags. Do you know what Too Good To Go is?

K: No.

D: It’s this app where you can like, pay a very small amount of money and get a bag of stuff that like a restaurant or a supermarket would chuck out. So it’s like you're saving food from being chucked out, and you're getting an amazing deal with very, very cheap food.

K: Nice. 

D: Anyway, there was a fennel, and I was like, ‘Ugh, what am I going to do with this?’ And I looked up a recipe and just decided to go with it and roasted it. And it becomes so delicious and sweet. And it loses that kind of aniseed-y, licorice-y flavour that I think puts some people off. So I'd highly recommend you take the plunge and consider cooking with this very European food, which I discovered is indigenous to the Mediterranean shores. It's in season right now in much of Europe. So I will put the recipe that I used in the show notes, but – just roast it and eat it. It's delicious.

K: You wouldn't think it would roast well because it's so wet. That's impressive.

D: Yeah, I was surprised too. 

K: I ate loads of fennel in Sicily, in sort of sardine-y pasta. 

D: Oh, nice. Well, it is indigenous to the Mediterranean shores. So that's where it's from.

K: There you are!

D: What have you been enjoying? Oh, I'm gonna be annoyed now because you're gonna tell me about like some amazing baked goods you ate, right?

K: No, not necessarily. But I don't know if I mentioned the fact that I've just been on holiday in Sicily? Only about 500 times. Anyway, in between eating arancini and swimming in beautiful crystal-clear waters, I found the time to read a short Sicilian novel by Leonardo Sciascia, one of the island's best known writers. He also happened to serve as a member of the Italian Parliament and the European Parliament for the left in the late 70s and early 80s. He wrote a lot about the mafia and corruption within Sicilian society, often in the form of detective novels. But I actually opted to go for a historical novel that he wrote in the 60s, called ‘The Council of Egypt’. And it's really different from his detective novels. It's set in the late 18th century, around about the time of the French Revolution. And it is about a scheming priest who manages to defraud large parts of the city and aristocracy. But really, it shows the theme of moral corruption that you see in his more modern novels. And I really enjoyed reading it because the setting is a real reminder of all of these different historical forces that have shaped Sicily over the centuries. It's been invaded over and over again by the Greeks and the Romans and the Arabs and the French. And Sciascia paints a picture of Sicily as a place where as a result of constantly being invaded, people learn to plot and to try to turn situations to their advantage all the time. It's a pretty short novel, I managed to read it in a week on holiday. So if you too fancy a little trip to 18th-century Sicily, I really recommend it. It is called ‘The Council of Egypt’, and it is by Leonardo Sciascia.

HAPPY ENDING - 40’02”

D: A happy ending from the Netherlands, where as I mentioned earlier, until the rain arrived this week we've been basking in a ridiculous amount of sun in the past weeks, much to Katy's disbelief. And there is a very nice initiative that is spreading across the country to help protect against the potentially very serious health risks of getting too much sun. You may remember in a not-too-distant past, we were all accustomed to disinfecting our hands many times each hour from those dispensers that were placed all over the place.

K: Good times.

D: Well, at least here in the Netherlands, disinfecting has gone rather out of fashion lately, and the dispensers have been sitting around rather unloved. But they are now being given a new lease of life. A lot of them are being repurposed and filled with sun cream to help protect people in the Netherlands from sunburn, and they are being placed by 20 municipalities in parks, schools and beaches and at festivals, so people can cream up for free.

K: That's a really good idea.

D: Isn't it great?

K: And it's also – I'm gonna get in trouble after saying the weather was bad last week – a country that burns easily. Am I allowed to say that?

D: I'm not sure that's true either. My friend was visiting from London and saying how like, everyone is so tanned. But you're right that there's a big skin cancer problem here. So yeah, it's really good. It of course costs some money for the council or the festival who pay for these suncream dispensers to be maintained and filled. But it's an investment that's surely worth it, considering the health benefits from protecting yourself against the sun. So congrats to the people involved for making this happen. More free suncream in the world please.

* * * 

K: You will be pleased to hear that I have finally stopped posting annoying Instagram stories from my amazing holiday, so it is safe to return to our account.

D: You can unmute us.

K: Come and hang out with us at @europeanspodcast, or if you are a Twitter kind of person, you can find us there at @europeanspod.

D: Thank you to Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak for producing this week's show. We'll be back next week with more stories from this continent that you'll find to the east of the Atlantic Ocean, to the north of the Mediterranean, and to the west of Asia.

K: Thank you for locating us.

D: Ciao.

K: See you next week, everyone! Hejdå.