>> We don't have 20 or 40 or 50 years to wait to deal with the climate crisis.

We have to do it in the next 5 to 10.

The people who are hungry, they're hungry now.

They're not hungry 10 years from now.

♪♪ >> Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we are talking about the haves and the have-nots and the have yachts.

Global inequality has reached a level we haven't seen in our lifetimes, and the geopolitical convulsions of the past few years have only made things worse.

War ravaging Europe, economic fallout from the COVID pandemic continuing to hobble nations, and a warming planet, flooding some while starving others.

Through it all, the rich have gotten richer, while extreme poverty has exploded.

So what can we do to turn things around?

My guest today, the UN Foundation's president and CEO Elizabeth Cousens believes that innovative philanthropy has a key role to play.

And later, can tailgating and touchdowns bring this country together?

Absolutely.

Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

>> [ Gasps ] Jiminy papers.

>> But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> Oscar Wilde once wrote, "The one charm of the past is that it is the past."

But as the world makes its way through the early months of 2023, some grim milestones remind us that the past is still very much with us.

February 24th will of course mark the first anniversary of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, Putin's war as we call it.

March 11th will be three years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and I'm not even sure if this counts as an anniversary, but 2022 was the sixth warmest year on record since 1880.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all doom and gloom.

Ukraine's military has thwarted Vladimir Putin's imperialist ambitions, at least so far.

The post-pandemic global economy has mostly recovered.

And renewable energy sources are cheaper than ever, that's exciting.

And yet, I bring up the bad stuff because there's a real-life cost to these geopolitical convulsions.

The world is becoming unsustainably unequal.

Start big picture.

Since 2020, the richest 1% of people has accumulated nearly two thirds of all the new wealth created in the world.

To put it another way, some 10% of the world's population owns 76% of the wealth.

They also account for nearly half of all global carbon emissions.

Now let's zoom in to the Horn of Africa, where years of drought place 22 million people at risk of starvation according to the UN.

One way that countries like Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia have staved off economic ruin is by becoming heavily dependent on Ukraine for grain exports.

First three months of the war in Ukraine, the number of Ethiopian, Kenyan and Somali children at risk of dropping out of school tripled.

Putin's invasion, in short, has left casualties far beyond Eastern Europe.

So what are we doing to turn things around?

My guest today believes innovative philanthropy is a key tool for creating a more equal world.

Elizabeth Cousens is President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation, and she joins me now.

And I'm delighted to welcome Elizabeth Cousens.

>> Great to be here, Ian.

>> Such a range of things to talk about.

I want to start big picture, which is of course we are not seeing eight billion people on the planet progressing the way we need to.

A global middle class is hollowing out, poverty is increasing.

Do you think this is a new condition that people in the world have to get used to, that we're not going to be seeing inexorable progress going forward?

>> Yeah.

So is it our new normal to go backwards instead of forwards?

No, I don't think it's inevitable at all, but we are in not the best place.

Look, we were behind even before the pandemic, even before war in Ukraine, and even before the last three additional years of climate impacts, which have been so punishing.

So there's no secret that we have lost ground in those three years.

We've had poverty rising again, extreme poverty, which you just noticed, and so many other development indicators that have gone backwards rather than forwards.

Inequality is rising, too many indicators to count, but that doesn't mean it's inevitable at all.

So I think the real challenge for all of us is how do we get back on track?

How do we regain lost ground, and how do we renew our commitment to creating a better world?

And we have all of the means at our disposals to do that.

We just have some politics that, in my view, are interfering.

>> When you say the politics are not cooperating, what are the top things that you're talking about in that regard?

>> I think it's politics frankly at every level.

So first it's the challenge of politics in countries, whether it's wealthy donor countries or others who have turned inward more or less in the last few years, and that's led to depressed levels of overseas development assistance and other investments.

We've seen obviously the war in Ukraine have a real shaping effect on European donors.

But the larger question to my mind is whether we see collectively that we are on one planet, we're one world, we have fates that are intertwined, and whether we have a commitment to do something about that with a kind of spirit of common humanity.

We've lost ground on that front and we see that here at home in the United States, we see it in other places around the world.

But that to me is really the challenge of our times, to figure out and to regalvanize that spirit of "we're in it together, we have more in common than we have that divides us," and we can't solve any problem on the global agenda that we see today without intensified global cooperation.

So that really is, to my mind, the challenge of our times.

Think about climate change and what the future economy, a climate-friendly economy, looks like.

Part of the question is about timeframe.

Some of it's about how markets are structured.

A lot of it's about the policy signals to get the capital that there is plenty of in the world directed at the right kinds of things.

So that is a political problem.

It's a policy challenge.

It's one so far we're starting to solve, but insufficiently solving and we just need to accelerate our efforts to do that.

>> If I were to put in front of you right now the imminence of the food and fertilizer crisis, the imminence of global inflation, and sort of push and pull that against climate and what's happening every single year and the costs are only getting greater, is it inexorable reality that we've just lost an enormous amount of time and momentum because the former is distracting from the latter, or are they actually moving together?

>> Well, two things.

First, overall, we have to get better at dealing with simultaneous crises.

We obviously face several right now that are global in nature, systemic in their impact; it started with the pandemic.

Every year it includes climate, and the food and hunger crisis is obviously galloping along with us, commanding less attention I think still than it should.

So we have to get better at dealing with simultaneous crises one way or the other, and understanding what the interaction effects are between them.

So there are some crises that drive others.

There are some trade-offs, but we just have to get better at that, which is both a bandwidth question and also a resource challenge.

But you don't fix the food and hunger crisis that we have this year or in future years unless you fix the climate emergency.

So you have to do both.

They're absolutely intertwined.

>> I was recently with Chef José Andrés, who was about as dire as I have seen a human being be in front of me in expectations for massive expansion of starvation unless enormous amounts of funds are directed immediately towards food aid, critical food aid.

I know this is -- It's what he focuses on and he's deeply committed to it, but was he overstating the case?

>> No, not remotely.

I have to say I spent the last week in Davos, as I think you and others did.

I was struck that compared to just several months ago when this was top of the agenda, it didn't feature.

>> It did not.

>> Remotely.

>> It did not.

>> Actually, it's only getting worse, and there's a seasonality to food and hunger crises because they depend on food yields and they depend on when crops are produced and when fields are fallow.

So we are going to see this get so much worse over the course of this year, and I don't think we're paying collectively the right kind of emergency attention to it that we need to.

We will in the moment, but we need to be doing it now.

So I fear he's right.

>> What might that look like?

>> We have done heroic things before on the humanitarian front.

It's not like we are not collectively capable of it.

This needs a true mobilization of efforts.

Some of it's about financing, some of it's about making sure that we're working directly with communities who are the most vulnerable and likely to be affected.

I mean, you do see the UN already doing what it can so far under its current conditions, trying to negotiate food supplies and fertilizer from Ukraine and Russia.

That's a really important piece of their diplomatic effort.

But the humanitarian scale of this emergency is enormous, and we just have to treat it as such.

The needs are huge and growing and we have to be able to rise to this challenge and see it as something that's in both our interests and in our sense of common humanity.

We're not confronted at the moment with the images, we're not confronted with the reality that so many people around the world are facing, but that is coming, and we will wish we had done more earlier.

>> I wonder as the world moves towards China becoming the largest economy by the end of this decade in all likelihood, but China also being a middle-income country, a poor country, not a country that historically has done a lot in terms of leadership when we talk about humanitarian aid around the world, are you feeling that geopolitical reality as more of a constraint in terms of humanitarian support?

>> Well, look, I hope that the geopolitical realities, which are fierce in a lot of different dimensions, actually create opportunities for global leadership.

You've certainly seen China increase its contribution to the UN, for all things from the regular budget to peacekeeping.

I hope that may also be true in humanitarian terms.

I think this has to be seen as a global effort, which really does require all of us to step up for our fellow human beings who are in grave need.

>> We've talked mostly about government support so far.

Of course, your approach is a multi-stakeholder approach.

You've had a lot to say about philanthropy, and I'm wondering how you think philanthropy, what role it is playing right now from the private sector, from the foundation environment, and whether or not that is also evolving to meet the needs?

>> I think we have seen the role of philanthropy big and small, and let's recognize that philanthropy is a very diverse set of actors in all geographies at all scales and levels.

But we have seen both traditional philanthropies and new philanthropies really step up increasingly to recognize the gravity of the challenges we face, their unique role in their respective societies and communities, both with their money and with their voice, and with their ability sometimes to provide a novel platform for innovation and different kinds of solutions.

That's something that we at the UN Foundation have tried to be.

And you see that with so many philanthropies around the world, those who came together around COVID.

There was a global alliance of philanthropies that came together to support COVID response.

You've seen that around the energy transition.

You see it around climate in particular.

And I think there is a real prospect also around this food and hunger crisis.

Working very much with other sectors, not just philanthropies, but it's everyone that they can bring to bear in ways that they can contribute meaningfully.

I think we see the deficit of trust and so many institutions these days, and that does create the possibility for others to step into that breach and to recognize that we all have different kinds of roles that we can play and it's important that we play them as ambitiously and fully as possible.

>> Now, I noticed that the Gates Foundation recently announced that they're moving from $6 billion to $9 billion of allocated funding a year in today's environment.

Now, they've been quite notable in the sense that they've said consistently they want to spend all their money.

They don't want to create a foundation that's going to live forever.

I mean, governments, of course tend to spend much more than the money that they actually have, though not always on the smartest things.

Foundations tend to be much, much more cautious and conservative.

Does that need to change, and is that changing if it does?

>> Well, I think it's already changing.

I mean, it's true that foundations historically have tended to be conservative because they want to retain their philanthropic capital so they can use it in a perpetual basis.

But what I think you're seeing from quite a lot of philanthropies, and you're seeing it from the business sector as well, is a recognition that we have a window right now.

This is a moment in time where the choices we make, the investments we make have such long-term consequence.

And so you are seeing a great freeing up, I think, from certainly a lot of the philanthropies we work with, to want to use their capital, again use their voice and use their influence in different ways to contribute to the sort of changes that are needed in real time.

We don't have 20 or 40 or 50 years to wait to deal with the climate crisis.

We have to do it in the next 5 to 10.

The people we were talking about who are hungry at the beginning of this call, they're hungry now.

They're not hungry 10 years from now.

So there's a time sensitivity to action that I think you're seeing an increasing recognition of.

To me, that has a lot of possibility in it.

We of course have to make best use of it, but I do think you're seeing that kind of thing change quite a lot.

>> I mean, it really needs to.

When I think about climate in particular, it is so obvious that the damage and the dangers in the world today have been overwhelmingly caused by the wealthiest countries in the world, and it's not the fault of an India or an Indonesia or Pakistan that they're facing the challenges that they are right now.

And yet, these wealthy governments, and the corporations that have done so well inside them, just do not seem to take any direct accountability or responsibility for being stewards, for actually being responsible for the position that we're presently in.

And I know this frustrates the United Nations greatly.

>> Look, I think there's a lot of collective responsibility to go around because the world's not in an optimal place and we variously all contributed to that.

I think there is a real reckoning, of a sort, to come as people are increasingly recognizing their contribution to the state of the world that is not particularly healthy.

And then the question is, what are you going to do about it?

So I do see growing appreciation, increasing candor and self-reflection frankly, from big institutions, from powerful and influential institutions.

Not enough and not fast enough, but I do think it's trending in the right direction because sometimes that comes from people's own kids, kids who are questioning, "What kind of world are you going to leave us with this?"

These are very deep issues, not just at a professional or an institutional level, but very much at a personal one.

And I think we need to see that sort of recognition grow, deepen, and then inspire some real changes in behavior.

>> It's funny you just ended with that because it was what I was going to ask you about, because we do see, I mean, among the advanced industrial economies, it is the young people that recognize that the planet that they're going to be growing up in is not one that they're proud of having inherited.

When we talk about some of these big structural developments, what is your foundation doing to try to better engage the voices, the participation, and capture, harness the energy of those young people?

>> Well, let me tell you how I started my morning this morning.

So I started my morning by hosting a call with the world's leading youth-focused and youth-led organizations who represent roughly 875 million young people around the world.

They have all come together in something called the Unlock the Future Coalition -- that's something we've supported from the beginning -- to exert influence on the global stage, to align around things that they want to see happen and mobilize their collective energy and influence in a powerful way.

So that's one of the things we're doing.

I think anybody who can contribute to putting power, resources, voice underneath young people who are already exercising incredible leadership in their communities around the world, often at great risk to themselves, is all going to be for the better, and it's their world.

I mean, I keep thinking of that saying that you don't inherit the world from your ancestors, you borrow it from your children.

I mean, that couldn't be truer now than at any time in the past.

So I think that sensibility of what we're bequeathing to younger generations and not just the young people who make up half of the world's population today, but the 11 billion people who are yet to be born by the end of this century, what are we leaving to them?

So I think anything we can do to heighten our appreciation for that responsibility and to think really searchingly about what we can each do, and some people can do very small things, some people can do huge things.

Anything you can do is worth it because this really will take all of us to make the kinds of transitions that are required in our economies, in our industries, in our politics, to be able to move into the 21st century and anticipate that it will be a better, fairer and healthier place.

>> So I want to end on an optimistic note.

Tell the audience something that you are working on right now, specifically or broadly, where the global response is actually surprising you on the upside.

>> I think there are great surprises, and of course, smallpox eradication is a great one from history.

That is also an incredible achievement, also at a time of great geopolitical competition.

But let me remind colleagues who are listening.

In the last year -- Last year was a tough year, but three big things got done last year.

An agreement by all countries that they're going to negotiate a comprehensive treaty on plastics in the ocean, an agreement to negotiate a treaty on pandemic preparedness and response, and at the end of the year and something we are involved in with so many others, a landmark agreement on biodiversity to try to halt and reverse biodiversity loss on this planet by 2030.

Some of that comes under the term 30 by 30 to preserve 30% of the world's land and seas by 2030.

But I think you know the statistics, the extraordinary toll on biodiversity and species loss that there has been, that we're facing, and there is incredible opportunity to band together, I think especially on the basis of this agreement that was unexpectedly reached at the end of last year by all countries to try to do something about it.

>> Elizabeth Cousens, thanks so much for joining me today.

>> Thank you, Ian, great to be with you.

♪♪ >> This world may be more divided today than ever before, but there's one thing that still brings the country together.

That's right, spending Sunday mornings and evenings and afternoons freezing our backsides off in stadium parking lots while drinking really lousy beer, and GZERO's Alex Kliment has that story.

>> [ Screaming ] It was probably around the time that I was getting taped to the front of a bus that I thought to myself, "Yeah, maybe sports really can bring us back together as a country."

But let's start with how I wound up here in the first place.

You already know that America is getting more polarized by the day.

Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives don't live together, work together, or hang out together the way we used to.

We've become a nation of two rival teams, locked in a zero-sum death match over politics and culture.

But a new book called "Fans Have More Friends" argues that one pretty fun way to start healing our divisions is to be bigger sports fans.

To learn more, I met up with one of the book's authors, Dave Sikorjak, a marketing strategist who studies the motivations of sports fans.

The book is based on polls and focus groups with thousands of people over the past three years.

But to test the thesis in the wild, we met up at a tailgate in Philadelphia ahead of a game between the Giants and the Eagles.

>> [ Shouts distinctly ] >> What we found was the more engaged you were in sports, the more friends you would have.

But it's not only there.

It's the more you interact with those friends, the more you value those relationships.

What sports is actually doing is creating belonging in people's lives.

So what's interesting is, as the more you are engaged in sports as a Democrat, the more positive your feelings are towards Republicans.

And the same holds for Republicans.

The more engaged of a sports fan you are as a Republican, your feelings for Democrats warm a bit.

If you socialize with people, interact with people different than you, interact with strangers and have positive interactions, it's going to be good for you.

And sports just is something that structurally enables that.

There will be Republicans and Democrats at this game today, in this parking lot.

They're interacting around a common bond, and that hatred dissipates.

>> To test out the idea, I went out into the crowd, armed with a beer and a whistle to learn more.

>> You come to the stadium, you meet people who are sitting in front of you, sitting behind you, never seen them, never known them, you guys become family.

>> I work in an office and it's totally Eagled up.

I have so much more in common with clients that come in because they see it and we automatically talk sports.

>> Don't care what party you're from, if you're sports, you're an Eagles fan, Giants fan, don't matter.

We're all the same.

As long as you're not a Dallas fan.

>> Hopefully you can kind of use sports to unite people and not divide people, so to speak.

>> Maybe you believe this, maybe we believe that, but at the same time, at least we're out here to support the Eagles.

>> But what happened when I tested the limits of brotherly love by pulling out a Giants hat?

[ Indistinct shouting ] >> Let's cover him up.

Let's cover him up.

>> Boo!

You can go back to the other side of the river up north, okay?

>> So you'll be friends with anyone who's an Eagles fan?

>> Anyone who's a football fan.

>> The president of the Eagles was here last week.

>> Oh, 'cause I was going to say I didn't want to piss you guys off, but -- >> Wait, wait.

We got to tape you to the front of the bus.

>> Is it over?

I got to get taped to the front of the bus?

>> Yes.

That's how it is.

>> That's how it is.

>> You pulled the wrong hat.

>> Let's go to the front of the bus.

>> Let's do it!

>> To the front of the bus!

>> This is amazing.

I'm doing it for the culture.

In the end, after spending a day out here in Philly, I'll tell you what, I don't know if being sports fans alone is enough to save America from itself...

But if everybody made one more connection through sports, it's probably not the worst place to start.

For "GZERO World," I'm Alex Kliment.

♪♪ >> And now to "Puppet Regime," where, well, I'd tell you, but it's classified.

Roll that tape.

>> [ Gasps ] Jiminy papers.

Where'd this come from?

>> Mike Pence and Joe Biden are just total losers, okay?

Total losers.

Biden had like 30 documents.

Pence had like 12.

I had more than 300.

>> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you see, but you really don't, but you think, "Hey, I can drive global inequality all by myself," you know where you can do that?

Check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...