Podcasts about unfccc

"I call international environmental law a '30% solution'—it's not the most important factor in addressing problems like climate change. Politics, science, economics, and social attitudes all play crucial roles. Law can contribute, but it's just one piece."Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Craft-International-Environmental-Law/dp/019767237XIn this ClimateGenn episode I am speaking with the Regent's Professor at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Dan Bodansky, about the second edition of his book ‘The Art and Craft of International Law'.Dan is a recognised expert having worked on a range of negotiations across the decades including being part of the US negotiating team at the UNFCCC in the 1990's. Dan's talks through how International Environmental Law has evolved with state and non-state actors–including how civil society plays a role in creating momentum that can translate into societal norms that lead to international agreements.All of this is set against the rogue nature of the current US administration and the drastically reduced operating space in which we have to preserve a liveable climate.In the next episode I am speaking with Professor Jennifer Francis from the Woods Hole Research Centre, for an update on record Sea Ice loss in the Arctic and the myriad impacts this has on so many other parts of the global climate system.Forthcoming episodes also include my speaking with Zita Sebesvari, Deputy director of the United Nations University - Institute for Environment and Human Security –who is the lead author on a new Interconnected Disaster Risks report. And also an in-depth discussion with professor Mike McCracken about the role of solar radiation management geoengineering, offering a nuanced response to my recent interview with professor Raymond Pierrehumbert.Thanks to all subscribers. Please do send feedback or like and share, or become a member on Youtube or Patreon to support the channel. Thank you.

What role have fossil fuel lobbyists really played in climate negotiations over the past three decades? And what impact do they continue to have on climate progress today?In this episode, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson explore the history of this often unseen influence, ask why fossil fuel lobbyists have become so embedded in the COP system, and consider what levers are emerging to disrupt their involvement in domestic and international politics.This episode also features another panel from our live event at The Conduit, inspired by the RSC's Olivier-nominated production of Kyoto, and hosted by the Financial Times' Pilita Clark. She's joined by climate lawyer Tessa Khan, climate finance and energy expert Kirsty Hamilton, and historian of climate change negotiations and former UNFCCC secretariat Joanna Depledge, to unpack how industry lobbyists - from oil majors to car manufacturers - used misinformation, procedural manipulation, and political influence to undermine progress in Kyoto and beyond.So, how have fossil fuel lobby tactics changed in the years since Kyoto? Have they achieved everything they set out to? And what might the world look like if the industry had never sought to delay and derail climate negotiations - or, better yet, had taken responsibility for its role in the green transition?Learn more

What did it take to get nearly 200 nations to agree on tackling climate change in 1997? And what have we learned in the decades since?In this episode, we reflect on the drama, the impact and the legacy of the Kyoto Protocol, and go behind the scenes of the Royal Shakespeare Company's powerful and acclaimed production of Kyoto, currently playing in London's West End.After watching a performance of the play this week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson introduced a live event at The Conduit, bringing together those who were in the room at COP3 in Kyoto with those now shaping the path to COP30 in Belém and beyond.First, we hear from a panel of seasoned voices from the world of international climate diplomacy, moderated by climate journalist Ed King. Farhana Yamin, longtime negotiator for small island states, speaks of how Kyoto helped amplify the voices of vulnerable nations for the first time. Nick Mabey, co-founder of E3G, reflects on Kyoto's economic impact, arguing that it sparked a global clean tech revolution by making climate action economically viable. And Richard Kinley, former Deputy Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, offered rare insights into the diplomacy that shaped Kyoto. Together, they paint a vivid picture of Kyoto's legacy and what it still offers to today's climate movement.Later, we hear from the playwrights behind Kyoto, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, about how they turned bureaucratic negotiations into riveting on-stage drama.So, what's changed since 1997? Are we in a better place thanks to Kyoto? And is multilateralism still fit for purpose in today's world?Follow us on social media for behind the scenes moments and to watch our videos:Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimismOr get in touch with us via this form.Producer: Ben Weaver-HincksVideo Producer: Caitlin HanrahanExec Producers: Ellie Clifford and Dino SofosCommissioning Editor: Sarah Thomas This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brazil is presiding over the next UN climate change conference, COP30. In this episode, Anna and Ruth are joined by the Chief Executive Officer of COP30, Ana Toni, to discuss what the aims of the conference are, what Brazil's COP30 diplomatic strategy looks like, and what the UNFCCC's post-negotiation phase' means.

Felix Dodds has been a leading thinker in the area of global governance and sustainable development for thirty years. He is now an Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina.  Felix chaired the UN conference in 2011 that put forward the first set of indicative Sustainable Development Goals. He set up the Water and Climate Coalition at the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). He attended the COP29 held in Baku Azerbaijan in November of 2024.   The COP-29 presidency announced the “Baku Financial Goal,” a new commitment to allocate $1.3 trillion annually from climate financing for developing countries. Additional achievements include: Establish a Global Carbon Market Mechanism; Full Operation Guarantee for the Loss and Damage Fund; Launch of the Water for Climate Action Program; and, Emphasis on Public-Private Partnerships:  A major criticism is that the fossil-fuel interests have played too large of a role in the COPs.

Our second interview in season two focuses on the global policy making process that leads to climate policy. We talk to Arthur Lee who as an industry representative to the IPCC and UNFCCC for several decades helps us to decode all the acronyms and look behind the headlines on how the work to build collaboration between more than a hundred countries and countless other stakeholders unfolds at meeting like the annual COP (Conference of Parties) meetings. IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (2007). Mr. Lee was awarded a certificate of recognition by the IPCC for his contributions to the Nobel Peace Prize. Talking to a Nobel Peace Prize winner was a real treat.

Saint Lucia's Forestry Department is advancing climate action through a five-day training workshop, equipping staff with essential skills for improved forest data collection and UNFCCC reporting. Supported by the NDC Partnership Readiness Project (NRP) and GIZ, the initiative strengthens the country's commitment to the Paris Agreement and climate resilience.

On Monday 2 December 2024, the mother of all climate lawsuits began at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Unprecedented, it's also the largest ever case seen by the world court, with a record number of 97 States and 11 international organizations speaking in the oral proceedings. The ICJ is being asked to provide clarity on international law with respect to climate change.The Angry Clean Energy Guy on why what the ICJ says could change the world.

The climate talks agreed a $300 billion finance deal. Not everyone is happy about it.The COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, finally ended around 5.30am on Sunday morning, almost 36 hours after they had been originally scheduled to close. The good news was that the negotiators representing about 200 countries agreed a deal on climate finance: flows of capital from developed countries to low and middle-income countries, to help them cut emissions and adapt to a warming world. The bad news was that many countries felt the amount agreed – $300 billion a year by 2035 – was much too low. India and other developing countries had suggested a sum of $1 trillion or more a year was needed.Ed Crooks, now back home after attending the talks, is joined by Energy Gang regulars Melissa Lott, the partner general manager for energy technologies at Microsoft, and Amy Harder, the executive editor of the energy and climate news service Cipher. They discuss the outcomes from the negotiations: what was agreed and what it means. We also hear from Amy's colleague Anca Gurzu, who was following all the action at the talks in Baku.This conference was billed as “the finance COP”. If it had failed to agree a deal on finance, that would have been disastrous for the international effort to tackle climate change through the UNFCCC. But with a deal offering so much less than the amounts that developing countries had been hoping for, where does COP29 mean for the global energy transition? And as we look ahead to the crucial COP30 in Brazil a year from now, can we expect the countries of the world to commit to more ambitious goals for cutting emissions?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Majadiliano ya mkutano wa 29 wa nchi wanachama wa mkataba wa Umoja wa Mataifa wa mabadiliko ya tabianchi COP29 yamekumbwa na mkwamo huko Baku Azerbaijana muafaka haujapatikana. Majadiliano hayo yaliyotarajiwa kukunja jamvi leo sasa yanaendelea kwa kuwekwa mezani mapendekezo mapya kuhusu ufadhili wa mabadiliko ya tabianchi hasa kwa matifa yanayoendelea. Hakika vuta nikuvute bado inaendelea hata sasa washiriki wako mezani kwakikuna vichwa na kujadili mapendekezo mapya. Mkwamo huo umetokana na kushindwa kuafikiana katika masuala kadhaa kubwa likiwa ufadhili wa  mabadiliko ya tabianchi na hususasn kuhusu ni kiasi gani cha fedha nchi zinazoendelea zinapaswa kupokea kila mwaka hadi ifikapo mwaka 2030 na wapi fedha hizo za ufadhili zitatoka.Nchi zinazoendelea zinataka kulipwa dola trilioni 1.3 kwa mwaka lakini hilo halijaafikiwa na mapendekezo mapya yaliyowasilishwa na raia wa mkataba huo wa UNFCCC yanaonyesha tofauti kubwa na safari ndefu ya kufikia muafaka.Kwa mujibu wa mapendekezo hayo mapya yaliyowasilishwa leo mezani na Rais wa COP29 Mukhtar Babayev yanataka nchi zinazoendelea kupokea dola bilioni 250 kwa mwaka hadi kufikia mwaka 2035 kwa ajili ya kuchukua hatua didi ya mabadiliko ya tabianchi.Na maesema “Fedha hizi zitatoka katika vyanzo mbalimbali ikiwemo sekta za umma na za binafsi, na kitaifa na kimataiifa ikiwemo vyanzo mbadala”.Wakati pia COP29 ikitoa wito wa kufikia lengo la ufadhili wa dola trilioni 1.3 ifikapo mwaka 2035 pia imezikaribisha nchi zinazoendelea kutoa michango ya ziada.Kiwango kilichopendekezwa cha ufadhili kinatarajiwa kuzusha vuta ni kuvute katika majadiliano hayo kwa siku nzima ya leo huenda hadi kesho ingawa mkutano huo unahisi ahuweni kwamba kuna kiwango kilichowasilishwa na unataka hitimisho la mkutano haraka iwezekanavyo. Je nchi zinazoendelea zitapokea vipi pendekezo hili jawabu bado halijulikani. Wapenzi wa UN News Kiswahili endeleeni kufuatilia kwenye kurasa zetu kufahamu hatma ya mkutano huo.

Na fotografia de família dos líderes presentes na COP29, em Baku, mais uma vez se observa uma mancha masculina. Dos 78 líderes presentes, apenas oito são mulheres. Susana Viseu, presidente da Business as Nature, reconhece que a questão de género “acaba por ser um secundária naquilo que são as negociações” na COP. Todavia, ressalva que é uma abordagem errada porque sem a participação das mulheres “não vamos conseguir fazer as mudanças necessárias para responder às alterações climáticas”.  Na fotografia de família dos líderes presentes na Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre Alterações Climáticas em Baku, mais uma vez se observa uma mancha masculina. Dos 78 líderes presentes, apenas oito são mulheres, menos que no ano passado no Dubai.No início, o próprio Comité Organizador da COP29 do Azerbaijão era composto por 28 homens e zero mulheres. Após ter sido chamado à atenção, o comité adicionou 12 mulheres e, ainda, mais dois homens.Mais de metade da população mundial é composta por mulheres e meninas. As mulheres e as meninas representam 80% dos deslocados climáticos. São elas que suportam o peso dos impactos climáticos, mas também são elas que não têm lugar à mesa das decisões. Na COP 25, em Madrid, as partes acordaram o reforço do Programa de Trabalho de Lima e estabelecer um novo Plano de Acção de Género, com a duração de cinco anos, que prevê acções na capacitação, de consideração de género nas políticas públicas, participação paritária nos órgãos da UNFCCC, consideração de género na implementação do Acordo de Paris e monitoramento das questões de género dentro das negociações da UNFCCC, enfatizando a necessidade de se garantir a participação de mulheres jovens, indígenas e de comunidades locais.Susana Viseu, presidente da organização não-governamental Business as Nature, reconhece que a questão de género “acaba por ser um secundária naquilo que são as negociações” na COP. Todavia, ressalva que é uma abordagem errada porque sem a participação das mulheres “não vamos conseguir fazer as mudanças necessárias para responder às alterações climáticas e também à justiça climática”. Durante a COP29, a organização Business by Nature levou a cabo quatro eventos, todos eles direccionados para o empoderamento feminino. RFI: Que eventos realizam na COP29?Susana Viseu, Business as Nature: O primeiro foi sobre a água, o envolvimento das mulheres pela água, da eficiência à adaptação de como é importante envolver as mulheres neste domínio. O segundo teve a ver com as cidades e o envolvimento do poder local. Pela primeira vez, trouxemos à COP cidades portuguesas com uma rede que estamos a criar, que é a rede das cidades Pink Circle, que pretendem promover o empreendedorismo feminino ligada à economia circular e de baixo carbono. No Gender Day [dia dedicado ao Género, quinta-feira, 21 de Novembro] realizamos  dois eventos, de manhã, um primeiro em parceria a Comissão para a Igualdade de Género, dedicado aos jovens, com a apresentação dos projectos das nossas meninas, das embaixadoras da sustentabilidade e, à tarde, o evento das Mulheres pelo Clima, com o envolvimento de vários países para amplificar a ambição do que fizemos no ano passado na COP28 do Dubai, onde assinámos a carta de compromisso política - subscrita por todos os países da CPLP a nível governamental - e que estamos agora tentar envolver outros países, além dos países de língua portuguesa, e criar uma Global Coalition Gender and Climate [Coligação Global sobre Género e Cima] para ser formalizada na próxima COP no Brasil. Que avanços foram feitos nesta COP a nível de género? Nesta COP29 foi reafirmado o programa de trabalho de Lima, que é designado Working Program on Gender, que foi criado na COP de Lima (COP20, Dezembro de 2014) e foi revisto na COP de Madrid (COP25, Dezembro de 2019). Havia algum receio de que pudesse não ser reafirmado, porque temos sentido - em vários pontos do mundo - algum retrocesso relativamente aos direitos das mulheres. Mas, foi reafirmado.Estava, ainda, previsto que pudesse ser revisto no sentido de poder introduzir novas dimensões, novas prioridades ou ser mais ambicioso em termos dos indicadores e das metas que deveriam ser alcançadas, mas isso, para já, ficou um bocadinho em standby [suspenso] e comprometido para a COP do próximo ano. O género é um dos parentes pobres das negociações?É verdade e por vários motivos, embora as Nações Unidas reconheçam e reafirmem, frequentemente, a importância do envolvimento das mulheres e das meninas na acção climática, dizendo mesmo que não há acção climática sem o envolvimento activo das mulheres e das meninas.Apesar disso, este é um tema que acaba por ser um bocadinho secundário naquilo que são as negociações. E mal. As mulheres são as responsáveis, em 85% dos casos, pelas decisões de compra, são as responsáveis pela educação das crianças, pela assistência aos mais velhos e pela assistência em situações de crises climáticas. Quando temos cheias ou ondas de calor, são as mulheres que actuam em primeira linha, tanto ao nível de descarbonização das mudanças de consumo como na adaptação. Se não tivermos mulheres na primeira linha, nunca vamos conseguir fazer as mudanças necessárias para responder às alterações climáticas e também à justiça climática. Temos que criar esse empoderamento das mulheres para conseguir tê-las também nas mesas das negociações, com papel mais activo nos lugares de liderança, nas fotografias de grupo e nos painéis de alto nível .Olhando para o para o Brasil e para a COP30, o que é que está a ser feito nesta liderança lusófona para que efectivamente a próxima COP seja mais feminina?Foi com muita satisfação que ouvimos, no nosso evento, a representante do Governo do Brasil, que é coordenadora da próxima COP, dizer que estão fortemente empenhados em que este seja um tema muito forte na próxima COP. Isso está muito alinhado com aquilo que é a nossa actividade de Business as Nature. Estamos a criar uma Global Coalition Gender and Climate [Coligação Global sobre Género e Clima] que traga para cima da mesa diferentes iniciativas que estão a acontecer,  em conjunto com os Estados, empresas e as organizações da sociedade civil, para conseguirmos realmente implementar este plano de acção.

A Guiné-Bissau vai submeter o relatório Bienal de Transparência até ao final de 2024, cumprindo assim as metas no âmbito do Acordo de Paris. O anúncio foi feito pelo próprio ministro do Ambiente, Biodiversidade e Acção Climática da Guiné-Bissau. Em entrevista à RFI, Viriato Cassamá defende que nesta COP29, que decorre em Baku, no Azerbaijão, “dever-se-ia, de uma vez por todas, concretizar a questão do financiamento climático”. RFI: O que é que se pode esperar da COP29?Viriato Cassamá, ministro do Ambiente, Biodiversidade e Acção Climática da Guiné-Bissau: Nós esperamos que se comece, na verdade, a financiar as acções climáticas, porque já temos falado muito do financiamento climático, mas nunca se consumou. Eu lembro-me de que na COP de Cancún (2010, COP16), quando se criou o Fundo Verde do Clima, foram prometidos 100 mil milhões de dólares por ano até 2020, o que não se consumou.Nós achamos que - tendo em conta as posições das partes que a Guiné-Bissau faz parte, em termos de grupos negociais, a questão do financiamento é crucial para podermos combater os efeitos nefastos das alterações climáticas.Pensamos que nesta COP dever-se-ia, de uma vez por todas, concretizar a parte do financiamento climático para os países mais vulneráveis, que são os países que sofrem muito mais com os efeitos das alterações climáticas.Aproveito para dizer que a Guiné-Bissau está na vanguarda. Será o primeiro país dos PALOP, o segundo país da CPLP (depois do Brasil), a apresentar o seu relatório Bienal de Transparência. Já estamos na fase final e até Dezembro, este relatório será apresentado ao UNFCCC. Cada parte tem a obrigação de apresentar o seu relatório bianual de transparência. A Guiné-Bissau já tem praticamente mais de 95% deste relatório pronto e até Dezembro estamos em crer que vamos apresentar o documento. Acredita efectivamente que possa sair daqui essa materialização desse financiamento, uma vez que esta é uma COP que acaba por estar marcada essencialmente por ausências. Ausências de chefes de Estado, como é o caso dos Estados Unidos da América, França ou Alemanha. Isto não pode querer dizer que vamos ter aqui mais do mesmo, ou seja, muita discussão, mas depois, na verdade, pouca aplicação?É verdade. Concordo plenamente consigo porque esta COP foi marcada pela ausência de grandes países, os países com “mais responsabilidade” em termos de mitigação e em termos do pagamento para perdas e danos climáticos que temos estado a assistir em grande parte do mundo.Não é por acaso que o Fundo de Perdas e Danos foi acertado entre todas as partes na penúltima COP (a decisão de criar um fundo para perdas e danos foi tomada na COP27, em 2022, Sharm el-Sheikh, no Egito). Penso que a ausência destes países, dos Estados Unidos da América, da França em peso, Alemanha e até da Rússia, faz com que continuemos esta discussão nas próximas COP's.Mas a ausência desses países no Azerbaijão não é falta de vontade política de continuar a combater as alterações climáticas, provavelmente tem a ver com a relação desses países com a República do Azerbaijão. Não há a participação activa dos chefes de Estado, mas a delegação francesa está representada, a delegação americana também está representada não por figuras de proa, mas está muito bem representada sob o ponto de vista negocial.A Guiné-Bissau sofre com as consequências das alterações climáticas, nomeadamente na subida do nível do mar, na erosão costeira e também na questão da seca. O que é que tem vindo a ser feito para colmatar estes efeitos?A Guiné-Bissau tem estado a aproveitar todos os recursos e todos os financiamentos postos à nossa disposição no âmbito das organizações internacionais de que fazemos parte.Estamos a implementar um projecto sobre a zona costeira, protecção da zona costeira no montante de 12 milhões de dólares. Temos já em carteira e com financiamento, um outro megaprojecto também para reforçar a resiliência das comunidades costeiras e dos sectores produtivos da nossa economia. Aproximadamente 80% deles situam-se na nossa zona costeira. É um projecto que vai ser financiado pelo Fundo dos Países Menos Avançados, que também vai reforçar a resiliência das comunidades que vivem na zona costeira.Já iniciamos um outro projecto no âmbito da mitigação, que é o mini grid (sistema de geração e distribuição de energia eléctrica em pequena escala), energias renováveis. Embora a nossa emissão [de gases com efeitos de estufa] seja bastante fraca, estamos também a contribuir - da nossa maneira - para que a temperatura média global não ultrapasse os 1.5 graus centígrados, e estamos a trabalhar na nossa transição energética.O projecto da Organização para a Valorização do Rio Gâmbia (OMVG), que congrega quatro países, já está a produzir energia hídrica que abastece a Guiné-Bissau, Gâmbia, Senegal e Guiné-Conacri. Isto vai permitir, em larga medida, reduzirmos o uso de combustíveis fósseis para a produção de energia. A energia eléctrica vai permitir-nos atingir as metas que estabelecemos na nossa contribuição nacional determinada até 2030, que é a redução de 30% das emissões de gases com efeito estufa, até 2030. Estamos no bom caminho. Embora sejamos um país pequeno, temos estado a contribuir - à nossa maneira - para reduzir o aquecimento global.O presidente da Guiné-Bissau [Umaro Sissoco Embaló], no seu discurso no segmento de alto nível na COP29, falou na necessidade de existir um colectivo para responder à questão das alterações climáticas. Esta sensibilização para as alterações climáticas e para o aquecimento global do planeta, está, na Guiné-Bissau, também a ser levada a cabo nas camadas mais jovens?Sim, sem sombra de dúvida. Ainda antes de irmos para COP29, nomeamos uma embaixadora jovem para o clima. Temos uma rede jovem sobre o clima que está representada em todo o canto da Guiné-Bissau.Na Guiné-Bissau, os jovens representam 60% da população e nós temos estado a trabalhar muito essa camada jovem, com o apoio da UNICEF, que conseguimos trazer a este barco, porque antigamente trabalhávamos mais com o PNUD e outras organizações. A UNICEF agora está a colaborar com o Ministério do Ambiente, Biodiversidade e Acção Climática e elaboramos um estudo relativamente ao impacto das alterações climáticas nos jovens. Temos estado a difundir este relatório com o apoio da UNICEF e com o apoio desta rede recém-criada de jovens.

"Green Grifters" Hosts: Darren Weeks, Vicky Davis Website for the show: https://governamerica.com Vicky's websites: https://thetechnocratictyranny.com COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AND CREDITS AT: https://governamerica.com/radio/radio-archives/22594-govern-america-november-16-2024-green-grifters Listen LIVE every Saturday at 11AM Eastern time at http://governamerica.net United Nations COP29 conference in Baku is on. Globalist attendees want to ration meat, tax all proteins. Azerbaijan president embroiled in major "fossil fuel" scandal as COP29 begins. UK Met office is caught cooking temperature data to bolster climate claims. Will the GOP implement the carbon tax that the Dems said they couldn't? Some Trump picks are heavily invested in the Carbon trading scheme, while others are owned by Big Pharma. Can the president-elect "drain the swamp" while swimming in it? Phone calls throughout the show.

A 29ª Conferência das Nações Unidas sobre as Mudanças Climáticas (COP29) se inicia na segunda-feira (11), em Baku (Azerbaijão) sob a sombra de um novo governo de Donald Trump nos Estados Unidos. O pessimismo gerado pela notícia deixa ainda mais distante o principal objetivo da cúpula: chegar a uma nova meta de financiamento para os países em desenvolvimento conseguirem enfrentar e se adaptar à crise climática. Lúcia Müzell, da RFI em ParisDurante a campanha, Trump prometeu não apenas que voltaria a retirar o país do Acordo de Paris sobre o Clima, como também sairia do organismo da ONU que promove essas negociações internacionais, a UNFCCC, e não cumpriria outros tratados ambientais. Assim, até os repasses americanos para o Fundo Amazônia podem estar ameaçados, ressalta Márcio Astrini, secretário-executivo do Observatório do Clima, que reúne cerca de 100 organizações socioambientais brasileiras. "Impacta muito nas negociações, porque os Estados Unidos são os maiores poluidores históricos do planeta, são os que mais devem nesta conta do clima e são também os que mais podem fazer nesta questão climática”, salienta. Esta não é a primeira vez que a eleição americana joga um balde de água fria sobre a Cúpula do Clima. A COP 22 de Marrakesh, no Marrocos, aconteceu logo depois da primeira vitória do bilionário, no pleito de 2016."Temos agora um ambiente muito mais difícil para uma COP que já estava extremamente complicada. Tem países que já não queriam fazer nada, e com uma situação dessas nos Estados Unidos, eles encontram uma desculpa perfeita”, observa Astrini.Impasse no financiamentoO Acordo de Paris, assinado em 2015, previa que, de 2020 a 2025, as nações industrializadas entregariam US$ 100 bilhões por ano para as em desenvolvimento – compromisso que não foi cumprido. Este ano, os 195 países devem atualizar o valor que entrará em vigor a partir de 2026 e definir por quanto tempo – além de estabelecer os critérios que serão incluídos no cálculo. O tema mais polêmico é se a base de países doadores deve ser ampliada, com a inclusão de grandes potências emergentes, como a China, em primeiro plano, mas também o Brasil.O grupo de países mais pobres e emergentes, entretanto, chegará à cúpula determinado a rejeitar qualquer decisão neste sentido, salientou o negociador-chefe do Ministério das Relações Exteriores do Brasil, André Corrêa do Lago, em briefing em Brasília. O Acordo de Paris determina que cabe às nações desenvolvidas arcarem com o custo – por serem as responsáveis históricas pela explosão das emissões de gases de efeito estufa, que causam o aquecimento do planeta. A insistência em renegociar estes termos coloca em xeque a confiança dos países em desenvolvimento no próprio tratado.“Eu considero essa discussão razoavelmente inútil, porque o G77 + China está absolutamente fechado em relação à possibilidade de a solução para essa discussão ser o aumento do número de países doadores. A solução é uma maior transparência de como esse dinheiro vem e como a gente vai defini-lo, e um novo número, que represente, por parte dos países desenvolvidos, a mesma convicção de que nós estamos vivendo uma urgência climática e que eles têm quando pedem as nossas NDCs [Contribuições Nacionalmente Determinadas]”, frisou o embaixador."A urgência serve para o que nós temos que fazer, mas não serve para o que eles têm que fazer. Então, é uma discussão que está ‘animada'", ironizou Corrêa do Lago.O ambiente de negociações tende a ficar ainda mais duro durante o próximo governo nos Estados Unidos. Cada vez que as COPs conseguiram chegar a avanços contundentes, como a assinatura do próprio Acordo de Paris ou a inclusão de uma menção ao abandono dos combustíveis fósseis no documento final da última conferência, em Dubai, as negociações prévias bilaterais entre Estados Unidos e China foram decisivas. Sozinhas, as duas potências respondem por cerca de 42% das emissões globais. Mercado de carbonoSe, por um lado, a negociação sobre o financiamento tende a travar, por outro a regulamentação de um mercado internacional de créditos de carbono pode ser finalizada nesta COP, depois de anos de impasse. A secretária nacional para a Mudança do Clima do Meio Ambiente, Ana Toni, demonstrou otimismo."Enquanto a gente está debatendo, no nosso Congresso, um mercado de carbono nacional, a área internacional está andando mais rapidamente agora. Talvez cheguemos, no final da COP29, a um acordo”, disse. “O grupo de trabalho técnico chegou à finalização do trabalho deles, que é sobre as metodologias e os sumidouros, que estavam faltando. E agora os grandes temas de mercado de carbono internacional que eles estão debatendo é qual será o nível de transparência, que tipo de relatórios terão de ser dados", apontou.Novas NDCs e impacto na COP30 de BelémOutro tema importante da conferência é que os países começaram a apresentar seus novos compromissos para limitar as suas emissões, conhecidos pela sigla NDC, para além de 2030. As promessas serão formalizadas na COP30 de 2025 em Belém, no Brasil. O processo, entretanto, deve sofrer a influência negativa da volta de Donald Trump ao poder."O plano do governo Trump é aumentar as emissões americanas, ao subir a exploração dos combustíveis fósseis, por exemplo. A conta vai ser quanto tempo nós vamos perder em uma corrida que é tão emergencial”, lamenta Márcio Astrini."Nós precisamos de pelo menos promessas boas em cima da mesa. Estamos em uma situação em que nem as promessas conseguem ser boas, e as ações são piores do que as promessas ruins. Se a trajetória de ações continuar do jeito que está, a gente chegará a 3C de aquecimento, o dobro do que a gente deveria perseguir e o que está escrito no Acordo de Paris."O Brasil, no papel de anfitrião da próxima COP, deve apresentar a sua NDC durante a Conferência de Baku. Três propostas encontram-se sobre a mesa do presidente Lula – a menos ambiciosa delas, influenciada pelos lobbies petroleiro e agrícola, defende que o país mantenha o seu compromisso atual, de corte de 53% das emissões até 2030.Envolvido com a realização da cúpula do G20 no Rio de Janeiro, em novembro, e depois de sofrer um acidente doméstico, Lula cancelou a viagem a Baku. Ele será representado no evento pelo vice-presidente, Geraldo Alckmin.A COP29 se encerrará no dia 22 de novembro.

Let us know how we're doing - text us feedback or thoughts on episode contentThe United Nations estimates that we lose about one third of our global food supply every year to waste and loss. And that organic matter contributes about 10% of our global emissions each year.Getting a hold on our food waste is a big issue and a huge opportunity, not only for climate action but also in economic terms. In this episode, Paul breaks down the different points in the food value chain where spoilage and waste occurs - and discusses some of the innovative solutions that are emerging to address these issues.For more research:"The Enormous Scale Of Global Food Waste" - Stastita"Food loss and waste account for 8-10% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions; cost USD 1 trillion annually" - UNFCCC"7 innovative solutions for fighting food waste" - World Economic ForumFollow Paul on LinkedIn.

This episode features a conversation with Iryna Ponedelnik, Climate Project Manager at n-ost, a network for journalists reporting on Eastern Europe. It was recorded in person, in Tbilisi, Georgia, in August, 2024.Iryna is a science communicator who manages projects in the field of climate change, youth engagement, and the sustainable development goals. As well as her work at n-ost, Iryna is a representative of Green Network, a partnership of environmental organizations, activists, initiatives, and experts united for the development of the green movement in Belarus. She's a board member of the Climate Action Network for Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia, has acted as an observer at COP and SB negotiations, and was awarded a green ticket for the UN Youth Climate Conference in 2019. Iryna and I met back in June of this year, during the UN Climate Meetings in Bonn, Germany, where I was delivering some climate communications training alongside folks from UNU-EHS and UNFCCC. Iryna was quick to question the relevance of some approaches for contexts where, for example, freedom of speech was limited. Following further discussion, Iryna invited me to attend n-ost's conference on climate journalism in Tbilisi, Georgia, to hear the experiences of those reporting on climate despite a range of challenges, including censorship, authoritarianism, and full-scale war.Amongst other things, Iryna and I discussed the lack of visibility the region has on the international stage, the surreality of being labeled an extremist, and the need to live in exile in order to talk about climate change.Additional links: Check out the Climate Action Network Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central AsiaFind out more about the n-ost network for cross-border journalismRead about and support Green Network

Fiona Pelham is the CEO of Positive Impact, a global nonprofit transforming the event sector towards sustainability. Fiona has fostered collaborations with several UN bodies, including UNFCCC and UN Environment, aligning event strategies with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In 2019, Fiona made a pivotal decision to close her own businesses to focus entirely on her nonprofit work, ensuring transparency and dedication to the sector's transformation. Her efforts have not gone unnoticed; she was the youngest ever female chair of an international standard for sustainability in events and has been honored with an honorary doctorate for her contributions to the event industry. Now residing in Copenhagen, Fiona is a creative force committed to sustainable practices and mentoring the next generation of leaders. Join us as we explore Fiona's journey, her achievements, and her vision for a more connected and sustainable world. Learn More: https://www.positiveimpactevents.com/

Wendy Broadgate is a distinguished scientist who has worked in Earth system science and the science-policy interface for two decades. She is therefore singularly well-qualified to address the question of the dangers we face because of inadequate action to set our climate system within safe and just boundaries. Public support for more robust action to put the Earth on a more sustainable path is broad-based; what is lacking is political will and a better understanding of our collective intergenerational responsibilities. The costs of inaction will be orders of magnitude larger than acting now, including by rethinking the economic growth imperative of our current economic paradigm. Action is needed now; there is no shortage of knowledge. It needs to be complemented by enlightened political leadership. Learn more on GlobalGovernanceForum.org

This week, our hosts dive into The Rio Trio! No, this is not the name of a new cocktail but three COPs (Biodiversity in Colombia, Climate in Azerbaijan and Desertification in Saudi Arabia) which are about to happen back-to-back. Plus the plastics treaty negotiations in South Korea. Join our hosts for their take on the history of these three different but interrelated COPs, all conceived in the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. How have they evolved, and how might they continue to evolve to be fit for purpose in a changed world? Since this subject is complex, Christiana uses her get-out clause and phones a special friend for much-needed clarity. Christiana also asks the question: If we had a blank slate now, would it make more sense to kick start a process based on all nine planetary boundaries? Would this help us focus holistically on the interconnected challenges we face? Sit back and listen as the hosts try to make sense of this negotiating super season for the planet and all its peoples. Please keep tuned for special and in-depth coverage from the Outrage + Optimism team to guide you through each of these key moments.    NOTES AND RESOURCES How COPs are organised - Questions and answers  From Cancun to Durban: Implications for Climate and Multilateral Diplomacy by HE Patricia Espinosa COP16 host Colombia pushes for unified UN climate and nature pledges COP Presidencies Launch ‘Rio Trio'  Biodiversity COP Climate COP Desertification COP   GUEST Richard Kinley, President, Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability and former senior official at the UN Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC) from 1993 to 2017. He served as Deputy Executive Secretary from 2006 to 2017 and was intimately involved in the development of UNFCCC as an organization from its establishment and in its management and operations.   Learn more about the Paris Agreement.   It's official, we're a TED Audio Collective Podcast - Proof! Check out more podcasts from The TED Audio Collective   Please follow us on social media! Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn

Many governments are wary of providing transparency around their militaries' emissions, and campaigners can be hesitant to focus on the carbon footprint of conflicts, rather than more obviously humanitarian issues. But Ukraine has helped to shift opinion this year, after pushing for more accountability for wartime environmental harm. Recent estimates put the CO2e cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine at 175 million tonnes, and day to day military operations - not including conflicts - at a staggering 5.5% of global emissions.Bertie spoke to Lindsey Cottrell, Environmental Policy Officer at the Conflict and Environment Observatory, about the military emissions gap in carbon accounting, and the campaign for UNFCCC rules to be changed to acknowledge it.  Further reading: 'Russia's war with Ukraine accelerating global climate emergency, report shows', The Guardian, June 2024'Revealed: repairing Israel's destruction of Gaza will come at huge climate cost', The Guardian, June 2024'National climate action plans must include military emissions', CEOBS Blog, June 2024'UNEA-6 passes resolution on environmental assistance and recovery in areas affected by armed conflict', CEOBS Blog, March 2024'Does reporting military emissions data really threaten national security?', CEOBS Blog, February 2024'Ticking boxes: are military climate mitigation strategies fit for purpose?', CEOBS Blog, February 2024 Estimating the Military's Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 2022Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.

In this episode of Therapy Works, we are honored to have Christiana Figueres, an internationally recognized leader on climate change and former executive secretary of the UNFCCC. Christiana shares her insights on the importance of balancing awareness of climate challenges with a sense of agency and optimism. We discuss her personal journey, the impact of impermanence on her life, and how love and courage can drive effective climate action. In the Mother/Daughter section, we explore our own experiences and discuss practical steps and emotional strategies for engaging with climate issues in a meaningful way. Resources: For starters, find out more about Christiana Figueres over on her website - http://christianafigueres.com/ You can find her podcast, Outrage and Optimism here - https://www.outrageandoptimism.org/episodes And her book, The Future We Choose, is available here - https://www.globaloptimism.com/the-future-we-choose In the Mother/Daughter part of this episode, Sophie shares how she's going to be writing a series of newsletters on Substack about how to talk about the Climate Crisis with your children.  It's aimed to be released in September.  Until then, you can find our newsletter here - https://substack.com/@juliasamuel Christiana was very inspired by Plum Village and Thich Nhat Hanh.  You can find out more about their message here - https://plumvillage.uk Here's the episode Sophie mentioned with Krista Tippett and Christiana Figueres - https://onbeing.org/programs/christiana-figueres-ecological-hope-and-spiritual-evolution/ And here's the other episode she mentioned from Therapist Uncensored - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/therapist-uncensored-podcast/id1146941306?i=1000626570204 Otherwise, if you'd like to connect, I post regularly on Instagram, with more thoughts and some Monday Top Tips - http://instagram.com/juliasamuelmbe/ And for more info, check out my website - https://juliasamuel.co.uk This episode is sponsored by/brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/therapyworks and get on your way to being your best self. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

  Joe MacDonald, Principal, Chief Energy & Sustainability Officer | Net Zero Carbon Strategist | Innovator | Data Driven | Climate Risks & Opportunities. Joe MacDonald is an internationally recognized executive and visionary architect, researcher, policy specialist, and climate subject matter expert advocate. Joe founded Urban A&O in New York while serving as an Associate Professor at Harvard University, his alma mater, and now serves as one of its principals.   His mission is to revolutionize global project development, management, and delivery by harnessing the power of decarbonization, digitization, and enhanced data collection, delivering buildings of the future powered by renewable energy & automation.   Joe is UA&O's Project Architect, and his current focus is on revolutionizing the data center industry by incorporating emerging clean tech solutions including SMRs, Pumped Storage Hydropower, Geothermal, and green hydrogen for maximum sustainability, blue hydrogen as a practical compromise, and natural gas for immediate deployment benefits.   MacDonald designed Project Energos, a 150MW Data Center achieving carbon neutrality by combining a solar array of 100MW and a geothermal plant. Project Energos is the largest green development in the USA powered by hybrid energy.   Joe has been a thought leader in the net zero space for over a decade.He played a pioneering role in advancing smart city principles and data center innovations across Scandinavia, the Americas, and the EU. Joe was an early adopter on the net-zero development space across America, EU, and MENA regions.He secured and delivered a phased 2,000 multi-family home zero emissions development in the Hudson Valley, a $245M suburb development in San Francisco focused on circularity principles, and has worked with various asset management firms taking advantage of the IRA to provide net-zero middle to low income housing in the Texas Triangle.   He lectures worldwide on impact investing, climate change, the UN's 17 SDGs, circular economies and the drive to net zero strategies.Joe serves as an ambassador within the international sustainability and UNFCCC climate action spheres, delivering keynote addresses in Bangkok, Dubai, London, and Copenhagen. He leverages his influential platform to forge profound connections with industry leaders.   Show Highlights   Joe outlines his firm's core competencies: carbon neutral data centers, eco resorts, smart cities, green roofs, and plant walls. Pro tips on how to transition from a local office to a global workforce. Remote work with regular Zoom meetings and use of WhatsApp for efficient communication. Discussion on the significance of policy in driving sustainability. Comparison of US and EU policies, and the role of corporate mandates. Emphasizes the importance of patience, creativity, and grit. Focus on carbon neutrality and net zero projects,  Passive House in Texas  and Smart City in Colombia Be progressive and stay on the cutting edge of new technologies with federal funding. “I've seen many colleagues, both young people and also mid-career people, make this switch [into Green Buildings], and they're so thrilled that they did because the net of making that switch is that you do end up making a real impact in this space. So I encourage everybody who's interested to really take a crack at it.” -Joe MacDonald     Show Resource and Information Connect with Charlie Cichetti and GBES   GBES is excited our membership community is growing. Consider joining our membership community as members are given access to some of the guests on the podcasts that you can ask project questions. If you are preparing for an exam, there will be more assurance that you will pass your next exam, you will be given cliff notes if you are a member, and so much more. Go to to learn more about the 4 different levels of access to this one-of-a-kind career-advancing green building community!   If you truly enjoyed the show, don't forget to leave a positive rating and review on .  We have prepared more episodes for the upcoming weeks, so come by again next week! Thank you for tuning in to the !   Copyright © 2024 GBES

For next week's World Environment Day, Lisa's guests discuss the state of the climate today, myriad climate policy boards, and the inclusion of the youth voice. There is an incredible array of resources and opportunities for young people in Luxembourg on the subject and countless organisations working together on the issue — but is it enough? We have all noticed how wet this spring has been. Conversation in my circles have noted the long-term predictions of climate change on our weather patterns and seasons: more humidity, increased storms and rainfall in this geographical zone. The mention of climate change in the media is at risk of becoming jaded as it's on-going, requiring swift action but that action is sloth-like due to the need for global buy-in. People tune out if they feel they cannot make a difference. Not everyone can be an activist. And so, we rely on the scientific research to influence policy makers from around the world to act. Even if they agree to act, that policy then needs to be implemented in each country. And so the ultimate trickle down is that we, as citizens, need to be nudged into behavioural change that is the decision without requiring thought. My guests this week range from those who have spent many years researching climate related topics and climate policy-making, to the youth voice who were given the opportunity to be present at a COP event. Dr Andrew Ferrone is a physical climatologist, Andrew works at the interface of climate science and policy. He is Head of the Meteorological Service of the Administration of Technical Agricultural Services (ASTA) in Luxembourg, President of Luxembourg's Climate Policy Observatory (OPC) and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Spuerkeess. He is also the Permanent Representative to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the Head of the Luxembourg delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and coordinates the European Union's team of negotiators for scientific issues under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Andrew talks about his vast experience at these conferences and how to try to get consensus between countries with very different objectives, whether that be due to the stage of industrial development they are in, oil-rich countries or if they're islands at risk of disappearing. Claudia Hitaj is an advisor on climate change and sustainable finance at the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Biodiversity. Her work straddles economics, environmental policy and making the youth voice heard. The Ministry's Climate Youth Delegate Programme will bring two climate youth delegates, Frida Thorsteinsdottir and Natasha Lepage, to COP 29 to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan this November. They'll both have a chance to participate in a training program at COP29 and the UNFCCC for youth delegates from countries all over the world. Bartłomiej Nowak, 18 years old, took part in the National Junk Fuerscher Contest in 2022 and 2023, Luxembourg Informatics Olympiad in 2023, was awarded participation in COP28 in Dubai, where he met the Luxembourgish delegation and presented his project in the BENELUX-EIB pavilion in the blue zone. Arnfridur (Frida) Thorsteinsdottir, 17 years old student at ISL, was a finalist in the Jonk Fuerscher Contest 2024 due to her project on fish migration in Iceland. She will be travelling to COP29 in Baku with Natasha. Federica Maestri work with the Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg and talks about their commitment to sending young scientists to incredible science fairs and science events all around the world. https://www.un.org/en/observances/environment-day https://www.jugendrot.lu/cyd-2/ https://fjsl.lu/ https://unfccc.int/cop29

In the latest episode of Environment China's podcast, we speak to Ruixin Li as part of our Young Professionals in Sustainability series. Ruixin currently works as the lead climate specialist at ICF International Consulting (Beijing). He has eight years of experience working on climate change issues and more than four years of experience implementing international cooperation projects. His focuses include carbon market, green finance, and sustainable aviation. Previously, Ruixin worked for Greenovation Hub and China Youth Climate Action Network. He has also assisted several international NGOs in climate communication and local climate action. Since 2014, he has been tracking international climate negotiations under the UNFCCC and witnessed the reach of the Paris Agreement and the Paris Rulebook. His negotiation tracking articles can be found in several media, such as China Economic Herald, Caixin Globus News, and Ming Pao. This episode is in Chinese and is produced by our Executive Producer Xiaodan Yuan. Support us on Patreon!  https://www.patreon.com/EnvironmentChina 

Die Themen der Wissensnachrichten: +++ Forschende der Unis Marburg und Würzburg sagen, KI-Technik von Grenzbehörden entspricht keinen wissenschaftlichen Standards +++ Eichhörnchen könnten im Mittelalter Lepra übertragen haben +++ Gummiabrieb von Sportschuhen in Kletterhallen sprengt Grenzwerte für Luftverschmutzung +++**********Weiterführende Quellen zu dieser Folge:Detecting deception with artificial intelligence: promises and perils, in: Trends in Cognitive Science, 20.04.2024Ancient Mycobacterium leprae genome reveals medieval English red squirrels as animal leprosy host. May 03, 2024The invisible footprint of climbing shoes: high exposure to rubber additives in indoor facilities. 1.2.2024Domestic and international aviation emission inventories for the UNFCCC parties. 16.04.2024Reklame für KlimakillerWie Fernseh- und YouTube-Werbung den Medienstaatsvertrag verletzt. 06. Mai 2024Alle Quellen findet ihr hier.**********Ihr könnt uns auch auf diesen Kanälen folgen: Tiktok und Instagram.

Climate Correction™: What Does It Mean to Put a Price on Carbon?  This panel will discuss what it means to put a price on carbon, why this is important to drive climate action and provide insights into efforts being made in the U.S. and around the world by governments and businesses.  Speakers:   Angela Churie Kallhauge  Executive Vice President, Impact, Environmental Defense Fund  Angela Churie Kallhauge is the Executive Vice President, Impact at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Her work is focused on using inclusive processes and economic approaches to achieve ambitious climate solutions that deliver equitable benefits to people around the world. Angela joined EDF from the World Bank where she served as the head of the Secretariat of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC) for five years. Before that she was at the Swedish Energy Agency where she worked for 14 years on climate change, energy and development issues. During her time at the Swedish Energy Agency, she worked on carbon market development issues, including portfolio development and capacity building in developing countries. She also served as the EU lead negotiator on adaptation and resilience issues under the UNFCCC for close to a decade and represented Sweden in the Adaptation Fund Board where she led the work on accreditation for direct access. Angela also draws experience from the International Renewable Energy Agency, where she spent a couple of years leading the work to develop a climate change work program that places renewable energy action as a key part of climate change strategies. Prior to her engagement at the Swedish Agency, Angela spent close to a decade working at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and in Zimbabwe and Kenya with civil society organizations on climate, energy and development policy. Dirk Forrister  IETA President and CEO  Dirk is the CEO of IETA, a business association of carbon market professionals dedicated to delivering the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. IETA's 330 member companies operate in every carbon market in the world. Dirk's prior roles include Managing Director at Natsource, a 1.4 billion carbon fund management firm and Energy Director, Environmental Defense Fund. Earlier, he served as Chair of the White House Climate Change Taskforce in the Clinton Administration and as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Congressional Affairs. Holly Pearen  Lead Counsel, Global Climate Cooperation, Environmental Defense Fund  Holly Pearen is Lead Counsel for EDF's Global Climate Cooperation Team where she helps teams develop and execute legal and regulatory strategies to achieve climate objectives. Her work focuses on addressing price transparency and equity in voluntary carbon markets through tailored and predictable regulatory oversight and private law solutions. Prior to joining EDF Holly represented banking and financial clients in litigation involving natural resource assets and worked as an Attorney-Advisor for the Department of the Interior, Southwest Regional Office of the Solicitor. She has a J.D., with focus on Environmental Law from Lewis & Clark Law School, an undergraduate degree in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and studied at the London School of Economics.  

On this episode of About Sustainability…, Alice and Erin were joined by Naoyuki OKANO and Nagisa SHIIBA, IGES experts working on Climate Adaptation. This episode, recorded in December 2023, offers a quick recap of what happened at COP28 in Dubai and then dives deep into the far-reaching impacts of climate change on human security. Hosted in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) brought the world's leaders together to discuss how to confront the climate crisis. Some of its main outcomes include the first Global Stocktake (GST), the agreement on the framework for operationalising the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), and the agreement on the operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund. Naoyuki and Nagisa introduce us to their new research project on Climate Security in the Asia Pacific, funded by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We discuss how framing the climate crisis as a security issue can be a powerful approach to mobilising resources across areas and tackling global challenges.ABOUT OUR GUESTSDr. Naoyuki OKANO is a Policy Researcher in the Adaptation and Water Unit of IGES. He works on issues related to the laws and governance of climate change adaptation, nature-based solutions, transboundary climate risks, and climate security. Nagisa SHIIBA is a Policy Researcher at the Adaptation and Water Unit of IGES. She is engaged in research projects on climate change adaptation and supports the negotiation process for the Japanese delegation to the Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS AND PROJECTSAsia-Pacific Climate Security Project (APCS) Website IGES is organising an international symposium on climate security in Asia-Pacific on 8 February 2024. Register here: https://www.iges.or.jp/en/events/20240208TIMESTAMPS00:10 - 02:10             Intro                                         02:10 - 05:06             COP 28                                   05:06 - 13:18             Global Goal on Adaptation     13:18 - 17:33             Loss and Damage 17:33 - 36:07             Climate Security 36:07 - 51:18             Climate Migration 51:18 - 54:22             Food Security 54:22 - 57:00             Balancing Security Issues in Climate Adaptation Plans "About Sustainability..." is a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), an environmental policy think-tank based in Hayama, Japan. IGES experts are concerned with environmental and sustainability challenges. Everything shared on the podcast will be off-the-cuff discussion, and any viewpoints expressed are those held by the speaker at the time of recording. They are not necessarily official IGES positions.

A study published in 2021 found that 59 per cent of 10,000 young adults surveyed are extremely worried about climate change, with many experiencing negative effects on their daily lives. This phenomenon, termed "climate anxiety", is characterised by feelings of helplessness and fear due to the perceived enormity and complexity of climate change issues. In conjunction with IPS' annual flagship conference, Singapore Perspectives 2024, themed around the topic of youths, the sixth episode of the "IPS On Diversity" Season 4, delves into the psychological and emotional impact of climate change on young people. Host Liang Kaixin is joined by Melissa Low, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions, and Darren Quek, Principal of Forest School Singapore and a climate activist. Melissa and Darren discuss their personal experiences with climate anxiety and the broader implications of this emotional state on society. The conversation touches upon the role of media in shaping perceptions of climate change and the potential impact of climate anxiety on future demographic trends, like decisions around starting a family. The discussion concludes with suggestions for addressing climate anxiety, including seeking mental health support, and engaging in community and grassroots activities. The episode provides insights into the emotional toll of environmental issues on younger generations and the need for mental health support in the face of climate change. Find out more about adulting and housing in Singapore: Straits Times (17 July 2023): Green Pulse Podcast: Climate change is a mental health issue    Channel News Asia (30 March 2023): Commentary: Is ‘climate anxiety' a clinical diagnosis? Should it be? Asian Scientist (23 March 2023): The Climate Anxiety Issue  About our guests: Melissa Low, Research Fellow, Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions, National University of Singapore Melissa Low is a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions. At the Centre, Melissa leads Continuing Education and Training. She previously worked at the Energy Studies Institute, NUS where she carried out research projects on a range of energy and climate issues of concern to Singapore and the region. She has participated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP) for over a decade and is an active sustainability thought leader, authoring, publishing and presenting at various forums. She is the Designated Contact Point for NUS's accreditation to the UNFCCC and currently serves as interim co-focal point on the nine-member Steering Committee of the Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organisation (RINGO) Constituency under the UNFCCC. Melissa holds an LLM in Climate Change Law and Policy (with distinction) from the University of Strathclyde, MSc in Environmental Management and BSocSci (Hons) in Geography from NUS. For her Master's thesis on past and contemporary proposals on equity and differentiation in shaping the 2015 climate agreement, Melissa was awarded the Shell Best Dissertation Award 2013. She is currently pursuing a PhD part-time at the NUS Department of Geography. Outside of work, Melissa started an eco-friendly/ social book swop movement in Singapore, called Books and Beer, which has been featured in The Straits Times, The Business Times, Bangkok Post and The Wall Street Journal's Scene Asia Blog. Darren Quek, Principal, Forest School Singapore Darren is the Principal of Forest School Singapore (FSS). He has spent 15 years in the field of Education, starting from a simple Assistant Trainer for Robotics and Game Programming, till where he is now, a Principal for FSS and Trail Blazer for Forest School Education in Singapore. He started the first Forest School in Singapore in 2016, after learning from and understudying from his Mentor Atsuko sensei, a Forest Kindergarten practitioner and parent in Japan. He also earned his Forest School Level 3 Practitioner Certification through time spent in Manchester and Sheffield undergoing training and assessments. More from On Diversity Season 4 Episode 5: Youth and Caregiving with Tan Poh Lin, Senior Research Fellow at IPS and Jason Leow Season 4 Episode 4: Home Alone and Adulting with Chew Han Ei, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at IPS and Klinsen Soh Season 4 Episode 3: Hustle Culture and Quiet Quitting with Laurel Teo, Senior Research Fellow at IPS and He Ruiming, Founder of The Woke Salaryman Season 4 Episode 2: Destigmatising HIV and AIDS with Rayner Tan, Assistant Professor of NUS and Terry Lim, Associate Director of Action for AIDS Season 4 Episode 1: The Dual Challenges of Poverty and Single Motherhood with Carrie Tan, MP, Founder of Daughters of Tomorrow and Elizabeth Quek, Programme Manager at AWARE Season 3 Episode 9: Being Biracial in Singapore with Shane Pereira, Research Associate at IPS and Dave Parkash, Co-Founder at Fook Kin Restaurant Season 3 Episode 8: Pregnancy and Maternity Discrimination with Sher-li Torrey, Founder of Mums@Work and Kalpana Vignehsa, Senior Research Fellow at IPS Season 3 Episode 7: Palliative Care for the Young and Old with Dr Chong Poh Heng, Medical Director at HCA Hospice Limited and Tay Jia Ying, an end-of-life doula and Founder of Happy Ever After See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep#075: On the second of this month, Prime Minister Dahal hosted a high-level side event at COP 28 entitled “Call of the Mountain: Who Saves Us from the Climate Crisis?”. Nepal, from its first pavilion ever at COP, spoke of the disproportionate impact on its ecosystem and local inhabitants despite having near-zero emissions -finally gathering the world's attention for an agenda it heralded for more than a decade.  In this episode, PEI colleagues Lasata Joshi and Raju Pandit dive into the pivotal themes and outcomes of the recent COP. Recounting Raju's participation in this and multiple previous COPs, they explore the significance of COP Nepal and the real-life experience of Nepali delegates. They discuss recent critical shifts in the climate narrative on fossil fuels, proactive participation of major oil industries, global stocktake, loss, and damage, and Nepal's push for the mountain agenda.   Raju Pandit Chhetri is the Executive Director of Prakriti Resources Centre (PRC), an environment and development organization based in Kathmandu. He has over fifteen years of experience in climate change policy and sustainable development. Raju has followed UN climate change negotiations under the UNFCCC and Green Climate Fund (GCF) for over a decade. He closely works with the Government of Nepal and the Least Developed Country Group at the climate negotiations. He has written and contributed to several papers on climate change. Raju passionately advocates for ambitious climate actions and sustainable development.  If you liked the episode, hear more from us through our free newsletter services, PEI Substack: Of Policies and Politics, and click here to support us on Patreon!!

COP Конференция сторон (Conference of the Parties) — ежегодное собрание стран, участвующих в Рамочной конвенции ООН по изменению климата (UNFCCC). Каждая COP представляет собой важное событие, где страны обсуждают и принимают меры в отношении изменения климата. Какие решения были приняты в 2023м году рассказывает экологическая и климатическая журналистка Ангелина Давыдова.

什麼都漲，當然荷包也得跟著漲

Since November 30th, when you were wrapping up your Thanksgiving celebration time with family and friends and planning for Christmas, the United Nations Climate Change Conference was underway in the United Arab Emirates. This was the 28th gathering of the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, otherwise known as COP 28. The guest on this Crosstalk has been in attendance and has summed up the totalitarian nature of this effort in just a few words- censorship, global taxes and tyranny.--Joining Jim to let listeners know what was being discussed and proposed was Alex Newman. Alex is an award-winning international freelance journalist, author, researcher, educator and consultant. He is senior editor for The New American. He is co-author of Crimes of the Educators and author of Deep State- The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes. He is founder of Liberty Sentinel.

Since November 30th, when you were wrapping up your Thanksgiving celebration time with family and friends and planning for Christmas, the United Nations Climate Change Conference was underway in the United Arab Emirates. This was the 28th gathering of the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, otherwise known as COP 28. The guest on this Crosstalk has been in attendance and has summed up the totalitarian nature of this effort in just a few words- censorship, global taxes and tyranny.--Joining Jim to let listeners know what was being discussed and proposed was Alex Newman. Alex is an award-winning international freelance journalist, author, researcher, educator and consultant. He is senior editor for The New American. He is co-author of Crimes of the Educators and author of Deep State- The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes. He is founder of Liberty Sentinel.

This week on Outrage + Optimism our hosts discuss the leaked documents revealing how Adnoc, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and Dr. Sultan were planning to use COP 28 meetings with other countries to promote deals for its national oil and gas companies. With Dr Sultan set to give his speech on Thursday, our hosts ask what needs to happen to restore the faltering trust in his presidency and avoid derailing the COP agenda at such a vital time.  Our guest this week is Nathaniel Stinnett who founded the Environmental Voter Project, which targets inactive environmentalists, transforming them into consistent voters to build the power of the environmental movement, something which may prove critical given the news that Trump would scrap the landmark IRA and BIL legislations if elected. To close this week's episode, we have Chris Redmond, Co- Artistic Director of Hot Poets with his poem ‘Blink', with a beautiful musical accompaniment by The Tongue Fu Band (music written by Riaan Vosloo). The poem was commissioned by 3M as part of a series of poems in collaboration with UNFCCC's Resilience Frontiers.    NOTES AND RESOURCES   GUEST Nathaniel Stinnett, Founder & Executive Director of the Environmental Voter ProjectTwitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram ARTIST Chris Redmond, Artistic Director - Hot Poets (the film of ‘Blink' will be released on Thursday 30 November on YouTube and across Hot Poets channels) Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | TikTok The Tongue Fu Band Twitter | Instagram   Learn more about the Paris Agreement.   It's official, we're a TED Audio Collective Podcast - Proof! Check out more podcasts from The TED Audio Collective   Please follow us on social media! Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn

Today is the start of COP28. And for the next two weeks, Zero will be in the United Arab Emirates, along with more than 70,000 people who will come for the year's biggest climate conference. These are set to be difficult negotiations. Getting every single country to agree to one common text is a gargantuan task. So for this first episode from COP, we wanted to hear from someone who's been on the inside; someone who has helped forge global climate agreements from the ashes of broken diplomacy.  Christiana Figueres is the cohost of the podcast Outrage & Optimism, and was formerly the head of the UNFCCC, the body tasked with running COP meetings. She took over the role at a low point in global climate negotiations in 2010 and her efforts culminated in the signing of the Paris agreement in 2015. Now, the world is way off track to meet that goal. So we wanted to hear from Christiana about what can be expected from COP28, the role the fossil fuel industry plays in negotiations, and whether the climate summit is still fit for purpose. More: Listen to Christiana's podcast, Outrage and Optimism Sign up to the Green newsletter Fill out Bloomberg Green's climate anxiety survey Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kate Mackenzie and Kira Bindrim. Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Picture this: unlocking the secrets of the complex world of carbon markets, and in doing so, driving both environmental performance and social impact. Today, we're sitting down with none other than Sarang Murthy from Native, a leading voice in corporate sustainability, to take you on that journey. We're going to tackle the intricacies of the global carbon market, from trust and transparency to a shifting regulatory landscape, and dive into how initiatives like the ICVCM (the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market) and VCMI (Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative) are setting new rules to increase accountability.Have you ever wondered about the implications of cheaper offsets on the carbon market? We will answer that question and more in our deep-dive into the economics of 'low hanging fruit' and nature-based solutions. Sarang will guide us through understanding the importance of a sound climate strategy and the role of regulations like ARTICLE 6 and the UNFCCC in shaping the voluntary carbon market. Prepare to have your perspective broadened and your knowledge deepened on this critical topic.Finally, we will explore Forest Trends, discussing their reports on the voluntary carbon market, and potential concerns associated with a surplus of credits. We'll navigate the dynamics of carbon offsetting, and discuss the hope surrounding a goal of reaching $75 per ton by 2030 to limit global warming. This is a conversation you won't want to miss. Join us on this insightful journey as we explore how corporations can effectively use carbon offsets to drive environmental performance and positive social impact.Dirigo Collective Website

Brazilian economist and IPCC lead author Roberto Schaeffer examines what constitutes a “fair share” of emissions reductions under the Paris climate process, and how fairness is defined. -- This December, at COP 28 in Dubai, countries will consider the results of the first “global stocktake,” which is a global report card that compares real climate commitments and actions with the level that's in fact needed to achieve global net zero and avoid the worst of climate outcomes. Following COP, countries will be expected to intensify their efforts to reduce their climate impacts and keep the targets of the Paris Climate Agreement in sight.  As they consider their future commitments, countries will grapple with their capacity to reduce emissions, whether that level is in fact “fair” in a global sense, and what the climate implications of their efforts may be. Roberto Schaeffer, a professor of energy economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, explores paths to deliver the dual imperatives of fairness, and maximum carbon reductions, in the global climate context. Schaeffer is a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Reports, and a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize. His work focuses on frameworks to maximize individual country contributions to the global climate effort. Roberto Schaeffer is a professor of energy economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Related Content The Net Zero Governance Conveyor Belt https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/publications/the-net-zero-governance-conveyor-belt/ East Meets West: Linking the China and EU ETS's https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/research/publications/east-meets-west-linking-the-china-and-eu-etss/ Accelerating Climate Action https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/podcast/accelerating-climate-action/   Energy Policy Now is produced by The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For all things energy policy, visit kleinmanenergy.upenn.eduSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How is climate change disproportionately impacting global health, and how should these damages be compensated? Join Margaret and Clare, two public health students at Emory University, to explore these questions by interviewing delegates from developing nations at the UNFCCC's 27th Conference of the Parties. The interviews were recorded in November 2022, and this episode is being released one year later to commemorate the life of Dr. Saleemul Huq, who recently passed away and is featured prominently in the episode. Learn more about Dr. Saleemul Huq https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/climate/saleemul-huq-dead.html Audio from the protest at the start of the episode: AP Archive. (2021, November 16). Activists from Global South lead protest at COP27. https://youtu.be/s2he_RjWhv4 Learn more about the International Centre for Climate Change and Development https://www.icccad.net/ Learn more about LaRutadelClima https://larutadelclima.org/ Learn more about the Panafrican Climate Justice Alliance https://pacja.org/ Learn more about IBON International https://iboninternational.org/ Read the full text of the loss and damage funding agreement https://unfccc.int/documents/624440 Read the press release titled "COP27 Reaches Breakthrough Agreement on New “Loss and Damage” Fund for Vulnerable Countries" https://unfccc.int/news/cop27-reaches-breakthrough-agreement-on-new-loss-and-damage-fund-for-vulnerable-countries Learn more about the Green Climate Fund https://unfccc.int/process/bodies/funds-and-financial-entities/green-climate-fund Read the Green Climate Fund report https://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/document/status-pledges-irm_1.pdf Learn more about Next Gen. Global Frontier https://ngglobalfrontier.org/ Read a PBS News article about the conference outcomes https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/cop27-closes-with-deal-struck-for-climate-disaster-fund-but-no-new-emissions-cuts , and a CNN article https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/19/world/cop27-egypt-agreement-climate-intl/index.html

A daily news briefing from Catholic News Agency, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask your smart speaker to play “Catholic News,” or listen every morning wherever you get podcasts. www.catholicnewsagency.com - John Kirby, a White House National Security Council spokesman, announced during a Thursday press conference that beginning Friday the US government will begin evacuating US citizens from Israel through charter flights. Kirby said that the administration is still working through the details of the arrangement but that the flights out of Israel will take Americans to Europe. He added that the administration is “exploring other options to expand the capacity of doing this. Including exploring whether it's possible to help Americans leave by land and by sea.” Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle had urged the Biden administration to immediately evacuate US citizens from Israel. It is uncertain how many Americans are currently in Israel, but the death toll of US citizens in the country continues to rise. For the latest on the conflict in Israel, visit catholic news agency dot com. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255665/bipartisan-group-of-lawmakers-urges-biden-to-evacuate-americans-trapped-in-israel Pope Francis received Sultan Al Jaber, president-designate of COP28 UAE, on Wednesday at the Vatican. The meeting comes ahead of the COP28 meeting taking place at Expo City Dubai from November 30 to December 12. The Conference of the Parties (COP) is an annual conference that was established after the signing of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) treaty in 1992 at the UN Rio Conference, also known as the Earth Summit. The COP represents all the states that are party to the UNFCCC and is an opportunity for world leaders, representing state and nonstate actors, to meet and discuss policy goals that seek to establish common — and often ambitious — goals for climate change mitigation. During their meeting October 11, Pope Francis and Al Jaber discussed the role that faith leaders and faith-based organizations can play in promoting the climate objectives of COP28. Advocacy for climate change has been at the center of Francis' pontificate. On October 4, the pope published his much-anticipated apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum, which is seen as the second installment of Laudato Si'. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255661/cop28-president-designate-meets-with-pope-francis-to-discuss-common-climate-goals Today the Church honors Saint Edward the Confessor, king of England from 1042 to 1066. His saintly bearing made him a popular sovereign, and his actions even more so. He abolished an unjust tax and was known to cure people with his touch. Edward died on January 5, 1066, and was canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1161. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/st-edward-the-confessor-392

The International Risk Podcast is a weekly podcast for senior executives, board members, and risk advisors.  We speak with risk management specialists from around the world. Our host Dominic Bowen, originally from Australia, is one of Europe's leading international risk specialists. Having spent the last 20 years successfully establishing large and complex operations in the world's highest-risk areas and conflict zones, Dominic now joins you to speak with exciting guests from around the world.The International Risk Podcast – Reducing risk by increasing knowledgeFollow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for all our great updates.In today's episode, we are joined by two impressive guests - Owais Arshad and Oleh Savytskyi. Owais Arshad is a geostrategist who advises on geopolitical developments, sanctions regimes, export controls, and international finance. His clients have spanned both public and private sector entities such as central banks, financial regulators, commodity traders, hedge funds, and private equity firms. He has spoken at leading industry fora on emerging risks such as DeFi protocols and writes on international security matters. His writings have appeared in journals such as Nikkei Asia and Al Jazeera and he is often requested to comment on topical issues such as sovereign risk, and international relations. Oleh Savytskyi is a world-class climate and energy policy expert. Oleh has 10 years of experience in the field – from youth climate activism to consulting the Ministry of Environment of Ukraine.  Oleh participated in the UNFCCC conferences COP21 in Paris in 2015 and in Glasgow in 2021. Oleh is a fellow of the Michael Succow Nature Conservation Fund and alumni of Agora Energiewende EnerTracks training program for energy transition professionals. Since 2022 Oleh has mobilized to fight the Russian fossil fuel industry as Campaigns Manager at NGO Razom We Stand.Further reading:Global Witness identified that 1 in 20 flights in the UK is using Russian jet fuel:https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/billboards-across-london-reveal-estimated-1-20-uk-flights-running-russian-oil/Russian oil profits rise in July as G7 fails to tighten sanctions and revise the price cap: https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/russian-oil-smashes-through-the-g7-price-cap-as-crude-exports-in-july-hit-the-highest-level-of-2023/articleshow/102653684.cms

Contents - Part 1 (of 3): [Support this channel by joing via https://patreon.com/genncc or https://www.youtube.com/@NickBreeze/videos] Download Joes Paper here. 1 - A license to pollute 2 - Offsets relationship to “net zero” 3 - “Carbon neutral” claims = greenwash 4 - Pay to pollute 5 - 94% of offsets are worthless 6 - Quantifying deforestation is tricky 7 - 2 types of lawsuit 8 - Disputing claims of carbon neutrality 9 - Unregulated markets 10 - Solving the climate problem for a few bucks a tonne (?) 11 - European Carbon Trading System 12 - Unregulated Markets In this first of three part interview with Dr Joe Romm, we discuss how dodgy off-sets and double accounting are plaguing climate progress at a time when the world urgently needs to get serious about climate change.  Joe Romm was the acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewables in the US Department of Energy, back in the 1990's and also the founder of the now ceased Climate Progress blog. Today Joe is a senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Centre for Science, Sustainability and Media. Part 1 focuses on the how offsets are misused by big brand names and nations in unregulated markets to peddle lies to the public. In Part 2 we discuss how this impacts the NDC accounting systems that underpin the Paris Agreement and expose much less well off countries to yet another form of what Joe calls Climate Imperialism.  In Part 3 we discuss how COP28 does not bode well having an oil boss as the president and how all these strands come together to reinforce the notion that the UNFCCC process is set-up to fail.

As the carbon dioxide removal industry grows, engineered solutions like direct-air capture are getting more attention. According to the IPCC, novel methods for carbon dioxide removal are necessary to meet the Paris climate targets.  But another UN body, the UNFCCC, recently sparked controversy by concluding in draft language that “engineering-based removal activities…pose unknown environmental and social risks.” That language could have ramifications for how carbon removal gets considered in upcoming international climate negotiations. Amidst the debate over the role of carbon removal, the US government is stepping up with some large investments in direct-air capture hubs and R&D support for novel technologies, creating a positive signal for the market. This week, Savvy Bowman, a program manager at ClearPath, joins us to explain what this all means for the future of carbon removal technologies and policies. Are you looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape the business of energy? Come network with utilities, top energy firms, startups, and AI experts at Transition-AI: New York on October 19. Our listeners get a 10% discount with the code pspods10. The Carbon Copy is supported by FischTank PR, a specialized climatetech PR firm dedicated to bringing meaningful results for companies in sectors spanning grid edge, solar, energy storage, battery, EVs, alternative fuels, VC and green building. FischTank helps clients stand out in an increasingly competitive and noisy space. Visit FischTank PR to learn more. The Carbon Copy is brought to you by Savant Power. Savant's end-to-end power systems provide energy generation, inverter and battery storage, generator control, flexible load management for every circuit, and level two EV charging. Learn more about the only company that can deliver an integrated smart home and energy solution controlled via a single award-winning app at Savant.com.

Climate action is speeding up -- and we each have the power to push that transformation forward. As the head of the UNFCCC, the UN's entity supporting the global response to climate change, Simon Stiell points to clear social and technological signals that show we're at the tipping points of a green revolution -- and invites us all to apply our unique skills to defending the planet against the catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis.

Climate action is speeding up -- and we each have the power to push that transformation forward. As the head of the UNFCCC, the UN's entity supporting the global response to climate change, Simon Stiell points to clear social and technological signals that show we're at the tipping points of a green revolution -- and invites us all to apply our unique skills to defending the planet against the catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis.

Climate action is speeding up -- and we each have the power to push that transformation forward. As the head of the UNFCCC, the UN's entity supporting the global response to climate change, Simon Stiell points to clear social and technological signals that show we're at the tipping points of a green revolution -- and invites us all to apply our unique skills to defending the planet against the catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis.

As COP 28 draws closer, climate negotiators race to finalize a financing structure to help countries that suffer climate change-related damages. --- In late November this year's global climate conference, COP 28, will begin in Dubai. The headline issue at COP will be the global stock take, which is a country by country review of progress toward fulfilling emissions reduction pledges under the Paris Climate Agreement. Yet while much attention at COP will be focused on emissions reductions, a second issue, and one that has long been critical to developing nations, will finally and concretely share the limelight. The issue is that of loss and damage finance, or financial support for countries that sustain damage resulting from a changing climate. In Dubai negotiators are expected to endorse a financing framework, and purpose-built fund, to explicitly address the recovery needs of countries impacted by climate change. Michael Franczak, a research fellow at the International Peace Institute, explores loss and damage finance and the race to deliver a formal finance mechanism in time for COP28. He also explains why the issue of loss and damage finance has been so contentious, and discusses innovative means to provide loss and damage funding on the scale that's needed. Michael Franczak is a research fellow at the International Peace Institute and author of the recent IPI report, “Financing Loss and Damage at Scale: Toward a Mosaic Approach.” Related Content COP 27 and Climate Finance: Renovated Debates, Same Old Dilemmas https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/news-insights/cop27-and-climate-finance-renovated-debates-same-old-dilemmas/ COP27 Dispatch: Why Loss and Damage Finance Is Critical to Small Island States  https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/podcast/cop27-dispatch-why-loss-and-damage-finance-is-critical-to-small-island-states/   Energy Policy Now is produced by The Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. For all things energy policy, visit kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Since last year's landmark climate legislation, members of congress are looking for niche areas of climate progress. Enter the Carbon Removal and Emissions Storage Technologies (CREST) Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at accelerating carbon removal and storage solutions.  It was introduced by U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Maria Cantwell and also has a bipartisan version in the House, the CREST Act tasks the Departments of Energy with initiating research programs and exploring the feasibility of a number of carbon removal pathways. The legislation focuses on several carbon removal techniques, such as biomass-based removal, ocean CDR, and DAC and geologic storage. A wide swath of organizations, including many familiar to the CDR industry like Clearpath, Stripe, and Vesta, have signed a letter of support.  In this episode, we going to delve into the details of the CREST Act, its potential impact on our climate, and the implications of its bipartisan support. Will it help scale up a domestic CDR industry? How will the Act's pilot reverse auction purchasing program facilitate the commercialization of carbon removal? We'll also take a look at the recent developments at the UNFCCC and their work on revising Article 6.4. The tone of their first draft has attracted a lot of attention and controversy for the way it characterized CDR.  Joining our policy panel are two experts in the field of carbon removal: Savita Bowman,  Program Manager at ClearPath, who works on organization's carbon dioxide removal initiatives, and Holly Buck, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo and author of “Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net-Zero is Not Enough”. On This Episode Holly Jean Buck Savita Bowman Asa Kamer Resources CREST Act CREST Support Letter Article 6.4 draft Note Connect with Nori Nori Nori's Twitter Nori's other podcast Reversing Climate Change Nori's CDR meme twitter account --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/carbonremovalnewsroom/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/carbonremovalnewsroom/support

An important climate body at the U.N. is causing controversy as they seek to define use of CDR, and many supporters of carbon removal are not happy.  The UNFCCC is in the process of figuring out how carbon removal fits into emissions reduction plans. A recent draft statement caused a stir among advocates of CDR and climate experts, as it described CDR as 'unproven' and ‘not contributing to sustainable development'. Many CDR advocates have contested these claims, especially given the crucial role attributed to CDR in last year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In response, the Carbon Business Council is drafted a letter, with support from over 100 CDR experts, in an attempt to persuade the UNFCCC to provide a clearer definition of CDR. In today's discussion, we'll speak with Wil Burns, Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University. We'll explore the purpose of this new definition, what's been proposed so far, and why it's so important." This episode's second segment is an interview with - Todd Myers, the Director of the Center for the Environment at the Washington Policy Center. His 2022 book, “Time to Think Small: How nimble environmental technologies can solve the planet's biggest problems,” sheds light on how compact, innovative technologies are giving individuals the power to safeguard endangered wildlife, cut back on CO2 emissions, and combat the issue of ocean plastic. Radhika talks with Todd about a landmark decision in Washington State that recently made headlines as it became the first in the U.S. to pass its capital budget with funding specifically allocated for carbon dioxide removal. Todd also discusses his work on environmental policy and its applications to carbon removal.  On This Episode Radhika Moolgavkar Wil Burns Todd Myers Resources Axios on UNFCCC process Draft of UNFCCC revision Carbon Business Council Letter Washington Policy Center “Time to Think Small” Washington State Funding Connect with Nori Nori Nori's Twitter Join Nori's Discord to hang out with other fans of the podcast and Nori Nori's other podcast Reversing Climate Change Nori's CDR meme twitter account --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/carbonremovalnewsroom/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/carbonremovalnewsroom/support

In this episode, environmental social scientist Holly Jean Buck discusses the critique of emissions-focused climate policy that she laid out in her book Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough.(PDF transcript)(Active transcript)Text transcript:David RobertsOver the course of the 2010s, the term “net-zero carbon emissions” migrated from climate science to climate modeling to climate politics. Today, it is ubiquitous in the climate world — hundreds upon hundreds of nations, cities, institutions, businesses, and individuals have pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. No one ever formally decided to make net zero the common target of global climate efforts — it just happened.The term has become so common that we barely hear it anymore, which is a shame, because there are lots of buried assumptions and value judgments in the net-zero narrative that we are, perhaps unwittingly, accepting when we adopt it.Holly Jean Buck has a lot to say about that. An environmental social scientist who teaches at the University at Buffalo, Buck has spent years exploring the nuances and limitations of the net-zero framework, leading to a 2021 book — Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough — and more recently some new research in Nature Climate Change on residual emissions.Buck is a perceptive commentator on the social dynamics of climate change and a sharp critic of emissions-focused climate policy, so I'm eager to talk to her about the limitations of net zero, what we know and don't know about how to get there, and what a more satisfying climate narrative might include.So with no further ado, Holly Jean Buck. Welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.Holly Jean BuckThanks so much for having me.David RobertsIt's funny. Reading your book really brought it home to me how much net zero had kind of gone from nowhere to worming its way completely into my sort of thinking and dialogue without the middle step of me ever really thinking about it that hard or ever really sort of like exploring it. So let's start with a definition. First of all, a technical definition of what net zero means. And then maybe a little history. Like, where did this come from? It came from nowhere and became ubiquitous, it seemed like, almost overnight. So maybe a little capsule history would be helpful.Holly Jean BuckWell, most simply, net zero is a balance between emissions produced and emissions taken out of the atmosphere. So we're all living in a giant accounting problem, which is what we always dreamed of, right? So how did we get there? I think that there's been a few more recent moments. The Paris agreement obviously one of them, because the Paris agreement talks about a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks. So that's kind of part of the moment that it had. The other thing was the Special Report on 1.5 degrees by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which further showed that this target is only feasible with some negative emissions.And so I think that was another driver. But the idea of balancing sources and sinks goes back away towards the Kyoto Protocol, towards the inclusion of carbon sinks, and thinking about that sink capacity.David RobertsSo you say, and we're going to get into the kind of the details of your critique in a minute. But the broad thing you say about net zero is that it's not working. We're not on track for it. And I guess intuitively, people might think, well, you set an ambitious target and if you don't meet that target, it's not the target's fault, right. It's not the target's reason you're failing. So what do you mean exactly when you say net zero is not working?Holly Jean BuckWell, I think that people might understandably say, "Hey, we've just started on this journey. It's a mid-century target, let's give it some time, right?" But I do think there's some reasons why it's not going to work. Several reasons. I mean, we have this idea of balancing sources and sinks, but we're not really doing much to specify what those sources are. Are they truly hard to abate or not? We're not pushing the scale up of carbon removal to enhance those sinks, and we don't have a way of matching these emissions and removals yet. Credibly all we have really is the voluntary carbon market.But I think the main problem here is the frame doesn't specify whether or not we're going to phase out fossil fuels. I think that that's the biggest drawback to this frame.David RobertsWell, let's go through those. Let's go through those one at a time, because I think all of those have some interesting nuances and ins and outs. So when we talk about balancing sources and sinks, the way this translates, or I think is supposed to translate the idea, is a country tallies up all of the emissions that it is able to remove and then adds them all up. And then what remains? This kind of stuff, it either can't reduce or is prohibitively expensive to reduce the so called difficult to abate or hard to abate emissions. Those are called its residual emissions, the emissions that it doesn't think it can eliminate.And the theory here is then you come in with negative emissions, carbon reduction, and you compensate for those residual emissions. So to begin with, the first problem you identify is that it's not super clear what those residual emissions are or where they're coming from, and they're not very well measured. So maybe just explain sort of like, what would you like to see people or countries doing on residual emissions and what are they doing, what's a state of knowledge and measurement of these things?Holly Jean BuckSo the state right now is extremely fuzzy. And so I'll just back up and say that my colleagues and I looked at these long term strategies that are submitted to the UNFCCC under the Paris Agreement. Basically, each country is invited to submit what its long term strategy is for reaching its climate goals. And so we've read 50 of those.David RobertsGoodness.Holly Jean BuckYeah, lots of fun. And they don't have a standard definition of what these residual emissions are, although they refer to them implicitly in many cases. You can see the residual emissions on these graphs that are in these reports.But we don't have a really clear understanding in most cases where these residual emissions are coming from, how the country is thinking about defining them, what their understanding of what's truly hard to abate is. And I emphasize with this being a challenge, because what's hard to abate changes over time because new technologies come online. So it's hard to say what's going to be hard to abate in 10 or 20 years.David RobertsRight.Holly Jean BuckBut we could get a lot better at specifying this.David RobertsAnd this would just tell us basically without a good sense of residual emissions across the range of countries, we don't have a good sense of how much carbon removal we need. So is there something easy to say about how we could make this better? Is there a standardized framework that you would recommend? I mean, are any countries doing it well and precisely sort of identifying where those emissions are and explaining why and how they came to that conclusion?Holly Jean BuckSo there's 14 countries that do break down residual emissions by sector, which is like the first, most obvious place to start.David RobertsRight.Holly Jean BuckSo, number one, everybody should be doing that and understanding what assumptions there are about what sectors. And generally a lot of this is non-CO2 emissions and emissions from agriculture. There's some emissions left over from industry, too, but having clarity in that is the most obvious thing. And then I think that we do need a consistent definition as well as processes that are going to standardize our expectations around this. That's something that's going to evolve kind of, I think, from the climate advocacy community, hopefully, and a norm will evolve about what's actually hard to abate versus what's just expensive to abateDavid RobertsKind of a small sample size. But of the 14 countries that actually do this, are there trends that emerge? Like, what do these 14 countries currently believe will be the most difficult emissions to eliminate? Is there agreement among those 14 countries?Holly Jean BuckWell, it's pretty consistent that agriculture is number one, followed by industry, and that in many cases, transport, at least short transport, light duty transport is considered to be fully electrified. In many cases, the power sector is imagined to be zero carbon. But I will also say that the United Kingdom is the only one that even included international aviation and shipping in its projection. So a long way to go there.David RobertsAnd this is not really our subject here. But just out of curiosity, what is the simple explanation for why agriculture is such a mystery? What are these emissions in agriculture that no one can think of a way to abate?Holly Jean BuckI mean, I think it varies by country, but a lot of it is nitrous oxide. A lot of it has to do with fertilizer and fertilizer production, fertilizer over application and I think obviously some of it is methane too from the land sector, from cows. So I think maybe that is considered a more challenging policy problem than industry.David RobertsYeah, this is always something that's puzzled me about this entire framework and this entire debate is you look at a problem like that and you think, well, if we put our minds to it, could we solve that in the next 30 years? I mean, probably. You know what I mean? It doesn't seem versus standing up this giant carbon dioxide removal industry which is just a gargantuan undertaking. This has never been clear to me why people are so confident that carbon dioxide removal is going to be easier than just solving these allegedly difficult to solve problems over the next several decades.I've never really understood that calculation.Holly Jean BuckI think it just hasn't been thought through all the way yet. But I expect in the next five years most people will realize that we need a much smaller carbon removal infrastructure than is indicated in many of the integrated assessment models.David RobertsYeah, thank you for saying that. This is my intuition, but I just don't feel sort of like technically briefed or technically adept enough to make a good argument for it. But I look at this and I'm like which of these problems are going to be easier to solve? Finding some non-polluting fertilizer or building a carbon dioxide removal industry three times the size of the oil industry? It's crazy to view the latter as like, oh, we got to do that because we can't do the first thing. It just seems crazy. Okay, so for the first problem here with net zero is we don't have a clear sense of what these residual emissions are, where they come from, exactly how we define them, et cetera.So without that, we don't have a clear sense of the needed size of the carbon dioxide removal industry. That said, problem number two here is that even based on what we are currently expecting CDR to do, there doesn't appear to be a coordinated push to make it happen. Like we're just sort of like waving our hands at massive amounts of CDR but you're not seeing around you the kinds of mobilization that would be necessary to get there. Is that roughly accurate?Holly Jean BuckYeah, and I think it follows from the residual emissions analysis because unless a country has really looked at that, they probably don't realize the scale of CDR that they're implicitly relying on.David RobertsRight, so they're implicitly relying on CDR for a couple of things you list in your presentation I saw and residual emissions is only one of those things we're expecting CDR to do.Holly Jean BuckThere's the idea that CDR will also be compensating for legacy emissions or helping to draw down greenhouse gas concentrations after an overshoot. I don't think anybody is saying that exactly because we're not at that point yet, but it's kind of floating around on the horizon as another use case for carbon removal.David RobertsYeah. So it does seem like even the amount of CDR that we are currently expecting, even if most countries haven't thought it through, just the amount that's already on paper that we're expecting it to do, we're not seeing the kind of investment that you would want to get there. What does that tell you? What should we learn from that weird disjunct?Holly Jean BuckFor me, it tells me that all the climate professionals are not really doing their jobs. Maybe that sounds mean, but we have so many people that are devoted to climate action professionally and so it's very weird to not see more thinking about this. But maybe the more nice way to think about it is saying oh well, people are really focused on mitigation. They're really focused on scaling up clean energy which is where they should be focused. Maybe that's reasonable.David RobertsYeah, maybe this is cynical, but some part of me thinks, like if people and countries really believed that we need the amount of CDR they're saying we're going to need, that the models show we're going to need, by mid century they would be losing their minds and flipping out and pouring billions of dollars into this. And the fact that they're not to me sort of like I guess it feels like no one's really taking this seriously. Like everyone still somewhat sees it as an artifact of the models.Holly Jean BuckI don't know, I think the tech sector is acting on it, which is interesting. I mean, you've seen people like Frontier mobilize all these different tech companies together to do these advanced market commitments. I think they're trying to incubate a CDR ecosystem. And so why does interest come there versus other places? Not exactly sure. I have some theories but I do wonder about the governments because in our analysis we looked at the most ambitious projections offered in these long term strategies and the average amount of residual emissions was around 18% of current emissions. So all these countries have put forward these strategies where they're seeing these levels of residual emissions.Why are they not acting on it more in policy? I think maybe it's just the short termism problem of governments not being accountable for things that happen in 30 years.David RobertsYeah, this is a truly strange phenomenon to me and I don't even know that I do have any theories about it, but it's like of all the areas of climate policy there are tons and tons of areas where business could get involved and eventually build self-sustaining profitable industries out of them. But CDR is not that there will never be a self-sustaining profitable CDR industry. It's insofar as it exists, it's going to exist based on government subsidies. So it's just bizarre for business to be moving first in that space and for government to be trailing.It just seems upside down world. I can't totally figure out government's motivations for not doing more and I can't totally figure out businesses motivations for doing so much.Holly Jean BuckWell, I think businesses acting in this R&D space to try to kind of claim some of the tech breakthroughs in the assumption that if we're serious about climate action we're going to have a price on carbon. We're going to have much more stringent climate policy in a decade or two. And when that happens, the price of carbon will be essentially set by the price of removing carbon. And so if they have the innovation that magically removes the most carbon, they're going to be really well set up for an extremely lucrative industry. This is all of course hinging on the idea that we're going to be willing to pay to clean up emissions just like we're willing to pay for trash service or wastewater disposal or these other kind of pollution removal services.Which is still an open question, but I sure hope we will be.David RobertsYeah, it's totally open. And this is another area where this weird disjunct between this sort of expansive talk and no walk. It's almost politically impossible to send money to this greenhouse gas international fund that's supposed to help developing countries decarbonize, right? Like even that it's very difficult for us to drag enough tax money out of taxpayers hands to fund that and we're going to be sending like a gazillion times more than that on something that has no visible short term benefit for taxpayers. We're all just assuming we're going to do that someday. It seems like a crazy assumption.And if you're a business and you're looking to make money, it just seems like even if you're just looking to make money on clean energy, it seems like there's a million faster, easier ways than this sort of like multidecade bank shot effort. I feel like I don't have my head wrapped around all those dynamics. So the first problem is residual emissions. They're opaque to us, we don't totally get them. Second problem is there's no evident push remotely to scale of the kind of CDR we claim we're going to need. And then the third you mentioned is there's no regime for matching emissions and removals.Explain that a little bit. What sort of architecture would be required for that kind of regime?Holly Jean BuckWell, you can think of this as a market or as a platform, basically as a system for connecting emissions and removals. And obviously this has been like a dream of technocratic climate policy for a long time, but I think it's frustrated by our knowledge capabilities and maybe that'll change in the future if we really do get better models, better remote sensing capacities. Obviously, both of those have been improving dramatically and machine learning accelerates it. But it assumes that you really have good knowledge of the emissions, good knowledge of the removals, that it's credible. And I think for some of the carbon removal technologies we're looking at this what's called MRV: monitoring, reporting, and verification.Is really challenging, especially with open systems like enhanced rock weathering or some of the ocean carbon removal ideas. So we need some improvement there. And then once you've made this into a measurable commodity, you need to be able to exchange it. That's been really frustrated because of all the problems that you've probably talked about on this podcast with carbon markets, and scams, bad actors. It's all of these problems and the expense of having people in the middle that are taking a cut off of the transactions.David RobertsYeah. So you have to match your residual emissions with removals in a way that is verifiable, in a way that, you know, the removals are additional. Right. You get back to all these carbon market problems and as I talked with Danny Cullenword and David Victor about on the pod long ago, in carbon offset markets, basically everyone has incentive to keep prices low and to make things look easy and tidy. And virtually no one, except maybe the lonely regulators has the incentive to make sure that it's all legit right there's just like there's overwhelming incentive to goof around and cheat and almost no one with the incentive to make sure it's valid.And all those problems that face the carbon offset market just seem to me like ten times as difficult. When you're talking about global difficult to measure residual emissions coupled with global difficult to measure carbon dioxide removals in a way where there's no double counting and there's no shenanigans. Like, is that even a gleam in our eye yet? Do we even have proposals for something like that on the table?Holly Jean BuckI mean, there's been a lot of best principles and practices and obviously a lot of the conversation around Article Six and the Paris agreement and those negotiations are towards working out better markets. I think a lot of people are focused on this, but there's definitely reason to be skeptical of our ability to execute it in the timescales that we need.David RobertsYeah, I mean, if you're offsetting residual emissions that you can't reduce, you need that pretty quick. Like, this is supposed to be massively scaling up in the next 30 years and I don't see the institutional efforts that would be required to build something like this, especially making something like this bulletproof. So we don't have a good sense of residual emissions. We're not pushing very hard to scale CDR up even to what we think we need. And we don't have the sort of institutional architecture that would be required to formally match removals with residual emissions. These are all kind of, I guess, what you'd call technical problems.Like, even if you accepted the goal of doing this or this framework, these are just technical problems that we're not solving yet. The fourth problem, as you say, is the bigger one, perhaps the biggest one, which is net zero says nothing about fossil fuels. Basically. It says nothing about the socioeconomics of fossil fuels or the social dynamics of fossil fuels. It says nothing about the presence of fossil fuels in a net-zero world, how big that might be, et cetera. So what do you mean when you say it's silent on fossil fuels?Holly Jean BuckYeah, so this was a desirable design feature of net zero because it has this constructive ambiguity around whether there's just like a little bit of residual emissions and you've almost phased out fossil fuels, or if there's still a pretty significant role for the fossil fuel industry in a net-zero world. And that's what a lot of fossil fuel producers and companies are debating.David RobertsYes, I've been thinking about this recently in the context of the struggle to get Joe Manchin to sign decent legislation. Like, if you hear Joe Manchin when he goes on rambling on about climate change, it's very clear that he views carbon dioxide removal as basically technological license for fossil fuels to just keep on keeping on. Like, in his mind, that's what CDR means. Whereas if you hear like, someone from NRDC talking about it, it's much more like we eliminated almost everything. And here's like, the paper towel that we're going to use to wipe up these last little stains.And that's a wide gulf.Holly Jean BuckI don't want to seem like the biggest net-zero hater in the world. I understand why it came up as a goal. I think it was a lot more simple and intuitive than talking about 80% of emissions reduction over 2005 levels or like the kind of things that it replaced. But ultimately, this is a killer aspect to the whole idea, is not being clear about the phase out of fossil fuels.David RobertsAnd you say you can envision very different worlds fitting under net zero. What do you mean by that?Holly Jean BuckWell, I mean, one axis is the temporality of it. So is net zero, like, just one moment on the road to something else? Is it a temporary state or is it a permanent state where we're continuing to produce some fossil fuels and we're just living in that net zero without any dedicated phase out? I think that right now there's ambiguity where you could see either one.David RobertsThat is a good question. In your research on this, have you found an answer to that question of how people view it? Like, I'd love to see a poll or something. I mean, this is a tiny subset of people who even know what we're talking about here. But among the people who talk about net zero, do you have any sense of whether they view it as like a mile marker on the way to zero-zero or as sort of like the desired endstate?Holly Jean BuckYou know, it's funny because I haven't done a real poll, but I've done when I'm giving a talk at a conference of scientists and climate experts twice I've asked this question, do you think it's temporary or do you think it's like a permanent desired state? And it's split half and half each time, which I find really interesting. Like, within these climate expert communities, we don't have a clear idea ourselves.David RobertsAnd that's such a huge difference. And if you're going to have CDR do this accounting for past emissions, for your past emissions debt, if you're going to do that, you have to go negative, right. You can't stay at net zero, you have to go net negative. So it would be odd to view net zero as the end state. And yet that seems like, what's giving fossil fuel companies permission to be involved in all this.Holly Jean BuckYeah. No, we do need to go net negative. And I think one challenge with the residual emissions is that carbon removal capacity is going to be finite. It's going to be limited by geography, carbon sequestration capacity, ecosystems and renewable energy, all of these things. And so if you understand it as finite, then carbon removal to compensate for residual emissions is going to be in competition with carbon removal to draw down greenhouse gas concentrations. And so we never get to this really net negative state if we have these large residual emissions, because all that capacity is using to compensate rather than to get net negative, if that makes sense.David RobertsYeah. Given how sort of fundamental those questions are and how fundamental those differences are, it's a little this is what I mean when I sort of the revelation of reading your book. Like, those are very, very different visions. If you work backwards from those different visions, you get a very, very different dynamic around fossil fuels and fossil fuel companies and the social and political valence of fossil fuels, just very fundamentally different. It's weird that it's gone on this long with that ambiguity, which, I guess, as you say, it was fruitful to begin with, but you kind of think it's time to de-ambiguize this.Holly Jean BuckYeah. Because there's huge implications for the infrastructure planning that we do right now.David RobertsRight.Holly Jean BuckIt's going to be a massive transformation to phase out fossil fuels. There's a million different planning tasks that need to have started yesterday and should start today.David RobertsYeah. And I guess also, and this is a complaint, maybe we'll touch on more later, but there's long been, I think, from some quarters of the environmental movement, a criticism of climate people in their sort of emissions or carbon greenhouse gas emissions obsession. And when you contemplate fossil fuels, it's not just greenhouse gases. There's like all these proximate harms air pollution and water pollution, et cetera, et cetera, geopolitical stuff. And I think the idea behind net zero was, let's just isolate greenhouse gas emissions and not get into those fights. But I wonder, as you say, we have to make decisions now, which in some sense hinge on which we were going to go on that question.Holly Jean BuckYeah, I mean, it was a huge trick to get us to focus on what happens after the point of combustion rather than the extraction itself.David RobertsYeah, it says nothing about extraction, too. So your final critique of net zero fifth and final critique is that it is not particularly compelling to ordinary people, which I think is kind of obvious. Like, I really doubt that the average Joe or Jane off the street would even know what you mean by net zero or would particularly know what you mean by negative carbon emissions and if you could explain it to them, would be particularly moved by that story. So what do you mean by the meta narrative? Like, why do you think this falls short?Holly Jean BuckI mean, accounting is fundamentally kind of boring. I think a lot of us avoid it, right? And so if I try to talk to my students about this, it's really work to keep them engaged and to see that actually all this stuff around net zero impacts life and death for a lot of people. But we don't feel that when we just look at the math or we look at the curve and we talk about bending the curve and this and that, we have this governance by curve mode. It's just not working in terms of inspiring people to change anything about their lives.David RobertsYeah, bending the curve didn't seem to work great during the pandemic either. This gets back to something you said before about what used to be a desirable design feature when you are thinking about other things that you might want to bring into a meta narrative about climate change. Most of what people talk about and what people think about is sort of social and political stuff. Like, we need to talk about who's going to win and who's going to lose, and the substantial social changes and changes in our culture and practices that we need. We need to bring all these things in.But then the other counterargument is those are what produce resistance and those are what produce backlash. And so as far as you can get on an accounting framework, like if the accounting framework can sort of trick various and sundry participants and institutions into thinking they're in a value neutral technical discussion, if you can make progress that way, why not do it? Because any richer meta narrative is destined to be more controversial and more produce more political backlash. What do you think about that?Holly Jean BuckNo, I think that the problem is we haven't invested at all in figuring out how to create desire and demand for lower carbon things. I mean, maybe the car industry has tried a little bit with some of the electric trucks or that kind of thing, but we have all this philanthropy, government focus, all the stuff on both the tech and on the carbon accounting pieces of it. We don't have very much funding going out and talking to people. About why are you nervous about transitioning to gas in your home? What would make you feel more comfortable about that?Those sorts of relational things, the conversations, the engagement has been gendered, frankly. Lots of times it falls to women to do this kind of relational work and hasn't been invested in. So I think there's a whole piece we could be doing about understanding what would create demand for these new infrastructures, new practices, not just consumer goods but really adoption of lifestyle changes because you need that demand to translate to votes to the real supportive policies that will really make a difference in this problem.David RobertsYeah, I very much doubt if you go to talk to people about those things they're going to say, well, I want to get the appliance that's most closely going to zero out my positive conditions. You're not going to run into a lot of accounting if you ask people about their concerns about these things. So these are the problems. We're not measuring it well. We're not doing what we need to do to remove the amount of CDR we say we need. We don't have the architecture or the institutional structures to create some sort of system where we're matching residual emissions and removals.And as a narrative it's fatally ambiguous about the role of fossil fuels in the future and plus ordinary people don't seem to give much of a shit about it. So in this presentation you sort of raise the prospect that the whole thing could collapse, that the net-zero thing could collapse. What do you mean by that and how could that happen?Holly Jean BuckSo I think this looks more like quiet quitting than anything else because I do think it is too big to fail in terms of official policy. There's been a lot of political capital spent.David RobertsYeah, a lot of institutions now have that on paper, like are saying on paper that they want to hit net zero. So it seems to me like it would take a big backlash to get rid of it.Holly Jean BuckYeah. So I don't think some companies may back away from targets. There'll be more reports of targets not being on track. And I think what happens is that it becomes something like the Sustainable Development Goals or dealing with the US national debt where everybody kind of knows you're not really going to get there, but you can still talk about it aspirationally but without confidence. Because it did feel like at least a few years ago that people were really trying to get to net zero. And I think that sensation will shift and it'll become empty like a lot of other things, unfortunately.But I think that creates an opportunity for something new to come in and be the mainframe for climate policy.David RobertsNet zero just seems like a species of a larger thing that happens. I don't know if it happens in other domains, but in climate and clean energy it happens a lot, which is just sort of like a technical term from the expert dialogue, worms its way over into popular usage and is just awful and doesn't mean anything to anyone. I think about net metering and all these kind of terminological disputes. So it doesn't really I'm not sure who's in charge of metanarratives, but it doesn't seem like they're very thoughtfully constructed. So let's talk a little bit about what characteristics you think a better metanarrative about climate change would include.Holly Jean BuckFirst, I think it is important that we are measuring progress towards a goal for accountability reasons. But I think there needs to be more than just the metric. I think we have an obsession with metrics in our society that sometimes becomes unhealthy or distracts us from the real focus. But I do think there should be some amount of measuring specific progress towards a goal. I think that the broader story also has to have some affect or emotional language. There has to be some kind of emotional connection. I also think we have to get beyond carbon to talk about what's going on with ecosystems more broadly and how to maintain them and have an intact habitable planet and then just pragmatically.This has to be a narrative that enables broad political coalitions. It can't be just for one camp and it has to work on different scales. I mean, part of the genius of net zero is that it is this multi-scalar planetary, but also national, also municipal, corporate, even individual does all of that. So those are some of the most important qualities that a new frame or a new narrative would have to have.David RobertsThat sounds easier said than done. I can imagine measuring other things you mentioned in your book several sort of submeasurements other than just this one overarching metric. You could measure how fast fossil fuels are going away. You could measure how fast clean energy is scaling up. There are adaptation you can measure to some extent. So I definitely can see the benefit in having a wider array of goals, if only just because some of those just get buried under net zero and are never really visible at all. That makes sense to me. But the minute you start talking about a metanarrative with affect, with emotion, the way to get that is to appeal to people's values and things that they cherish and feel strongly about.But then we're back to the problem we talked about earlier, which is it seems like especially in the US these days, we're just living in a country with two separate tribes that have very, very different values. And so the minute you step beyond the sort of technocratic metric, which in a sense is like clean and clinical and value free and start evoking values, trying to create emotion, you get greater investment and passion in some faction and alienate some other faction. Do you just think that that's like unavoidable and you have to deal with that or how do you think about that dilemma?Holly Jean BuckI actually think people do have the same values, but they're manipulated by a media ecosystem that profits from dividing them, which makes it impossible for them to see that they do have aligned values. And I base that just on my experience, like as a rural sociologist and geographer talking to people in rural America. People are upset about the same exact things that the leftists in the cities I visit are upset about too. They really do value justice. They think it's unfair that big companies are taking advantage of them. There are some registers of agreement about fairness, about caring for nature, about having equal opportunities to a good and healthy life that I think we could build on if we weren't so divided by this predatory media ecology.David RobertsI don't suppose you have a solution for that, in your back pocket?Holly Jean BuckI have a chapter on this in a forthcoming book which you might be interested. It's edited by David Orr. It's about democracy in hotter times, looking at the democratic crisis and the climate crisis at the same time. And so I've thought a little bit about media reform, but it's definitely not my expertise. We should have somebody on your podcast to talk about that too.David RobertsWell, let me tell you, as someone who's been obsessed with that subject for years and has looked and looked and looked around, I don't know that there is such thing as an expert. I've yet to encounter anyone who has a solution to that problem that sounds remotely feasible to me, including the alleged experts. And it kind of does seem like every problem runs aground on that, right? Like it would be nice if people had a different story to tell about climate change that had these features you identify that brought people in with values and drew on a broader sense of balance with the earth and ecosystems.But even if they did, you have to have the mechanics of media to get that message out to tell that story. You know what I mean? And so you got one whole side of the media working against you and one at best begrudgingly working with you. It just doesn't seem possible. So I don't know why I'm talking to you about this problem. No one knows a solution to this problem. But it just seems like this is the -er problem that every other problem depends on.Holly Jean BuckYeah, I mean, we should talk about it because it's the central obstacle in climate action, from my point of view, is this broken media ecosystem and if we could unlock that or revise it, we could make a lot of progress on other stuff.David RobertsYes, on poverty, you name it. Almost anything that seems like the main problem you talk about. The narrative must be able to enable broad political coalitions, but you are working against ... I guess I'd like to hear a little bit about what role you think fossil fuels are playing in this? It seems to me pretty obvious that fossil fuels do not want any such broad political coalition about anything more specific than net zero in 2050, right. Which, as you point out, leaves room for vastly different worlds, specifically regarding fossil fuels. It seems like they don't want that and they're working against that and they have power.So who are the agents of this new narrative? Like, who should be telling it and who has the power to tell it?Holly Jean BuckSo I think sometimes in the climate movement we grant too much power to the fossil fuel industry. It's obviously powerful in this country and in many others, but we have a lot of other industries that are also relevant and powerful too. So you can picture agriculture and the tech industry and insurance and some of these other forms of capital standing up to the fossil fuel industry because they have a lot to lose as renewables continue to become cheaper. We should have energy companies that will also have capital and power. So I do think that we need to think about those other coalitions.Obviously, I don't think it needs to be all grounded in forms of capital. I think there's a lot of work to be done in just democratic political power from civil society too. What I'd love to see is philanthropy, spending more money on building up that social infrastructure alongside funding some of this tech stuff.David RobertsYeah, I've talked to a lot of funders about that and what I often hear is like, "Yeah, I'd love that too, but what exactly be specific, David, what do you want me to spend money on?" And I'm always like, "Well, you know, stuff, social infrastructure, media, something." I get very hand wavy very quick because I'm not clear on exactly what it would be. So final subject, which I found really interesting at the tail end, I think it's fair to say your sympathies are with phasing out fossil fuels as fast as possible. And there's this critique you hear from the left-left about climate change that just goes, this is just capitalism, this is what capitalism does.This is the inevitable result of capitalism. And if you want a real solution to climate change on a mass scale, you have to be talking about getting past capitalism or destroying capitalism or alternatives to capitalism, something like that. Maybe I'm reading between the lines, but I feel like you have some sympathy with that. But also then we're back to narratives that can build a broad political coalition, right? Narratives that can include everyone. So how do you think about the tension between kind of the radical rethinking of economics and social arrangements versus the proximate need to keep everybody on board?How is a metanarrative supposed to dance that line?Holly Jean BuckYeah, unfortunately, I think in this media ecosystem we can't lead with smashing capitalism or with socialism. It's just not going to work, unfortunately. So then what do you do? I think you have to work on things that would make an opening for that. Having more political power, more power grounded in local communities. It's not going to be easy.David RobertsEven if you let the anti-capitalist cat out of the bag at all, you have a bunch of enemies that would love to seize on that, to use it to divide. So I don't know, what does that mean? Openings, just reforms of capitalism at the local level? I mean, I'm asking you to solve these giant global problems. I don't know why, but how do you solve capitalism? What's your solution to capitalism? What does that mean, to leave an opening for post-capitalism without directly taking on capitalism? I guess I'd just like to hear a little bit more about that.Holly Jean BuckSo I think that there's a lot of things that seem unconnected to climate at first, like making sure we have the integrity of our elections, dealing with redistricting and gerrymandering and those sorts of things that are one part of it. Reforming the media system is another part of it. Just having that basic civil society infrastructure, I think, will enable different ideas to form and grow.David RobertsDo you have any predictions about the future of net zero? Sort of as a concept, as a guiding light, as a goal? Because you identify these kind of ambiguities and tensions within it that seem like it doesn't seem like it can go on forever without resolving some of those. But as you also say, it's become so ubiquitous and now plays such a central role in the dialogue and in the Paris plans and et cetera, et cetera. It's also difficult to see it going away. So it's like can't go on forever, but it can't go away. So do you have any predictions how it evolves over the coming decade?Holly Jean BuckWell, it could just become one of these zombie concepts and so that really is an opportunity for people to get together and think about what other thing they would like to see. Is it going to be measuring phase out of fossil fuels and having a dashboard where we can track the interconnection queue and hold people accountable for improving that? Are we going to be measuring adaptation and focusing on that? Are we going to be thinking more about the resources that are going to countries to plan and direct a transition and trying to stand up agencies that are really focused on energy transition or land use transition?I mean, we could start making those demands now and we could also be evolving these broader languages to talk about and understand the motion. So we have some concepts that have been floated and already sort of lost some amount of credibility, like sustainability, arguably just transition. We have Green New Deal. Will that be the frame? Is that already lost? What new stuff could we come up with? Is it regeneration or universal basic energy. I think there's a lot of languages to explore and so I would be thrilled to see the Climate Movement work with other movements in society, with antiracist movements, with labor movements and more to explore the languages and the specific things we could measure and then take advantage of the slipperiness of net zero to get in there and talk about something else we might want to see.David RobertsOkay, that sounds like a great note to wrap up on. Thank you for coming. Thank you for the super fascinating book and for all your work, Holly Jean Buck. Thanks so much.Holly Jean BuckThank you.David RobertsThank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf, so that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time. Get full access to Volts at www.volts.wtf/subscribe

On this episode of the Energy Gang, it's a think-tank showdown. Host and referee for the day Ed Crooks is joined in the ring by Samantha Gross from the Brookings Institution, making her Energy Gang debut, and Joseph Majkut from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, returning to the show after joining us back in June. We start the discussion off with a deep dive into COP27, the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. In the year since COP26 in Glasgow, a lot has changed. Russia has invaded Ukraine, accelerating the surge in energy prices, and demand for coal has been making a comeback as countries look for alternatives to gas. What is on the agenda for COP27? Have the events of this past year set us back? And does the gang expect this year's summit to be a success or a failure? Also on the show: some good news for climate action as the United States Senate ratifies the Kigali Amendment, which aims for the phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) - potent greenhouse gases - by cutting their production and consumption. Listen in as the gang breaks down what is in this amendment, the progress that is being made, and what it means for the future of the energy transition. Finally, we wrap up the show with a look at the latest on European leaders calling for a price cap on Russian oil. This is an idea that has the backing of the G7 countries, including the US. The US says it could save consuming countries $160 billion a year. Meanwhile, the Financial Times is describing the idea as “one of the most novel international economic policymaking experiments ever attempted.” As always, check out our Twitter to let us know your thoughts and any future topics you want us to discuss. We're @TheEnergyGang. This episode of the Energy Gang is brought to you by Hitachi Energy, a global technology leader advancing a sustainable energy future for all. Learn more by listening to the Power Pulse podcast, where the Hitachi Energy team discusses the latest in the ongoing transformation of the world's energy systems. The Power Pulse podcast is available now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast app.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.