 Hello and welcome everyone to this very special online briefing creating policies, coalitions, and actions for global sustainable development, a conversation with Sir Robert Watson and Christiana Figueras. I'm Dan Bresset, the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Today marks the first in a series of congressional briefings and related educational resources to help provide the information and insights policymakers and their staff need in the lead up to during and after the 26th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. I would like to acknowledge our honorary co-sponsor, the British Embassy of Washington, and our great partner, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, for their support and cooperation that makes this briefing series possible. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information about environmental energy and climate change topics to policymakers. More recently, we've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-vill financing programs for their customers. ESI provides informative, objective, non-partisan coverage of climate change topics and briefings, written materials, and on social media. All of our educational resources, including briefing webcasts, fact sheets, issue briefs, articles, newsletters, and podcasts are always available for free online at www.esi.org. The best way to stay informed about our latest educational resources is to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. And for the first time, we will publish for policymakers a special daily newsletter during COP26, Glasgow Dispatch. You can subscribe online at www.esi.org forward slash COP news. In a few weeks, world leaders, diplomats, scientists, and public and private sector stakeholders will convene in Glasgow, Scotland for COP26. The urgency of the moment will be palpable, and expectations for progress will be very high. Barely two months ago, the first section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's sixth assessment report described climate change scenarios that range from barely acceptable to extremely bad to catastrophic. But there remains hope if we act, and act soon and decisively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help communities adapt to climate impacts. For the first time in several years, the official US posture at COP26 will be forward-looking and collaborative. While the State Department leads official US negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, we know that members of Congress and their staff will follow developments very closely. Congressional attention paid to COP26 is critical, because reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will require new policies and investments that only Congress can provide. Therefore, while the administration will project leadership and set goals, Congress ultimately determines the realm of possible commitments the United States can live up to in the international climate negotiations. And those possible commitments, defined now by the overlap of the ambitions and priorities of the executive and legislative branches of the US government, are significant. And if enacted, the policies and investments under consideration would be generational, transformative here in the US and abroad. Our briefing series, which starts today, is designed to help Congress understand the interrelatedness of US climate policy and the importance of our actions in the context of COP26 and future international climate negotiations. Today, our guests will help us put the stakes in context. Please, and yeah, there we are, thank you. Next Friday, October 15th, our focus will be climate adaptation. On Wednesday, October 20th, we will consider the important role of international climate finance. On Friday, October 22nd, we will describe the stakes of the negotiations at the beginning of Glasgow. And after COP26, on Thursday, November 18th, we will convene a briefing for an after-action report about key outcomes and important next steps. Today, we will learn from two of the top, most distinguished, most respected, most accomplished leaders and thinkers in international climate policy, Sir Robert Watson and Christiana Figueras. Our conversation, which will be co-moderated by ESI board member and professor Rosina Bierbaum, will explore cross-cutting challenges, climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation and pollution, facing the United Nation and other countries around the world. And we will discuss solutions, of course, because while we lack the political will, we have the technology and techniques and policies to act now to avert the worst outcomes of climate change. It is my privilege to introduce our first speaker, Sir Robert Watson. Sir Robert Watson is the lead author of the United Nations Environment Programs Report, Making Peace with Nature, a scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies. He is the former chair of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He is a recipient of the prestigious Blue Planet Prize and he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012. Bob, it is our pleasure to welcome you to our briefing today. I'm really looking forward to your presentation. Thank you. And if I could have had the first slide, please. Can you make it smaller? Some of it is not fitting on the screen. Yeah, okay. What I want to talk today about is indeed a document that I helped to co-lead Making Peace with Nature. It's a synthesis of 25 major global assessments, including all of the recent IPCC, IPS-GO and IRP International Resource Panel documents. It was prepared by 50 of the leading experts in the world from 30 countries, but it's based on the work of thousands of experts and in literally all cases, governments were involved in scoping the assessments and approving the final documents. One of the major conclusions is that the environmental challenges have grown in number and severity since Stockholm. The next slide, it's not centered actually. Half the slide doesn't show. I don't know what the problem is, but the slides aren't showing very well. What we know effectively is that the development pathway we're on to date, while it has actually helped to alleviate poverty, reduce the number of people in hunger, it has also led to some significant, can you make them larger somehow? It's the one in the middle I would like at the moment, the second one, number three. We will get those loaded up as quickly as we can. Sorry about that. What we know is that the current development pathway, while in some ways it has been successful, that's the one, yeah, while in some ways it's been successful, it has still left people behind. We still have an inequitable world where there's still many people in poverty, still many people that are hungry. But even worse, it's led to the destruction or the partial destruction of nature. And so they clearly what we need to do perfect, we need to go from transforming nature to transforming our relationship with nature. And that is what the rest of this talk will be about. How do we need to transform our relationship with nature, which will be good for development, but also good for the environment? The next slide please. What this simply shows you is that energy production has increased significantly in the last 50 years. I mean, it's increased since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, but it's grown tremendously, tripled in the last 50 years. And what this slide simply shows you is it predominantly based on coal, oil and natural gas, a small amount of hydropower, a small amount of nuclear. And we'll come back to the implication for that in a minute. The next slide shows how we've completely transformed our landscape. We've had an impact on three quarters of the ice-free land around the world. And we've had a major impact on two thirds of the world's oceans. One quarter of the land has been radically transformed. And on the right-hand side, it's hard to read. It talks about how we now converted the land, what is now plantation forest, what is extensive pasture, what's used for irrigation, et cetera. So you can look at these slides, they're on the website, but clearly what we're projecting is that by 2050, only about 10% of the ice-free land will still be near-natural. And what we're also projecting is that effectively about a quarter of all of the greenhouse gases that leads to global warming are effectively coming from land-based activities. The next slide talks about how it's not just changes in energy that's happening, we're seeing a massive change in chemicals. What you can see in the sort of the purple line is the great of growth of chemicals just in developing countries. And what you see in the blue line and the red line is the increase in fertilizers and pesticides. The problem with this fundamentally is much of those fertilizers and pesticides run off agricultural land into the rivers down to coastal zones. And we now have 400 dead zones in coastal regions around the world, an area roughly the area of the United Kingdom or Ecuador. The next slide then moves us on talking about, well, what's happening to greenhouse gas emissions? Well, because of our continued use of fossil fuel, what you can see here is a continued increase of greenhouse gases from all sources. Fossil CO2 is the big one at the very bottom, but methane is going up significantly, nitrous oxide, fluorinated gases, and also carbon dioxide from land use for normally deforestation, but also methane and nitrous oxide from land use, mainly agricultural practices. We know the world has already worn more than one degree Celsius in the last century. Indeed, the recent IPCC report set about 1.2 degrees Celsius. Major changes in precipitation patterns all over the world. Some areas getting wetter, other areas getting drier. Sea level is accelerating sea level rise. And we'll also see more frequent and intense extreme events like floods, droughts, hurricanes, cyclones. All of these changes are threatening people and nature, biodiversity, ecosystems, and their services. The next slide shows you what are the major threats to biodiversity? Well, we're showing what happens to terrestrial, freshwater, and marine systems. Major changes through land and sea use change in the blue on the left-hand side. Then we have exploitation, direct exploitation in pink. Climate change, pollution, invasive alien species. For terrestrial and freshwater system, the biggest drivers are indeed land and sea use change followed by direct exploitation. In the oceans is direct exploitation, mainly overfishing, that's the major driver. Now, while climate change has not been the major driver to date, if we don't meet the Paris target of 1.5 maximum two degrees Celsius change over the next century, then climate change may well become the dominant driver of the loss of biodiversity. Our estimates are that one million of the total of eight million plants and animal species are threatened with extinction. But we can save most of those if we act now. Population sizes and abundances are dropping, and ecosystems and their services, especially the regulating services, really are being degraded and unprecedented rate. The next slide moves on to simply show you in each histogram, you can't read it well, white means no impact, yellow means a moderate impact, red a high impact and purple a very high impact. What this simply shows you, literally all types of terrestrial system, vegetation loss, soil erosion, dry land water security, tropical crop yield. By two degrees Celsius warming, they're all in the high, and by three degrees Celsius, they're all at very high risk from climate change. The next slide shows you the equivalent for ocean ecosystem. Many of these are not so sensitive, except for warm water coral reefs on the left-hand side, with only a 1.5 degrees Celsius warming between 70 and 90% of all water corals will be in significant decline and may die. At a two degree warming, 99% or more, warm water corals will be in decline or will die. The next slide simply shows you we're about species losing their, what we call climatically determined geographic range. That means to say they are no longer viable where they naturally occur today. So for insects, you can see a 1.5 degree warming and we're already at 1.2, it's about 5% anywhere from two to 18%. Two degrees, 18%. By the time you get to 4.5 degrees Celsius, almost 70% of insects will be outside of their climatically determined range. Birds, you see the same sort of thing. As you move to higher and higher temperatures, more species move away from their climatically determined range. Major changes for ecosystems. The next slide says we cannot any longer think of climate change, biodiversity and land degradation and pollution as separate issue. Climate change is affected by losses of biodiversity and by land degradation. Biodiversity is adversely affected by climate change and land degradation and land degradation in turn is affected by climate change and loss of biodiversity. And all of them reduce human wellbeing. We have to look at these as one integrated system. We can no longer think of these separately, which means in the big conventions, we need to have targets, goals and actions that are mutually supportive. It's clear now that climate change, loss of biodiversity, while they are environmental issues, they're also economic, development, security, social, ethical and moral issues and all need to be tackled together at both the national level here in the USA, but also at the global level. The next slide says that we had 20 so-called IT biodiversity targets that were established in 2010 and their goal was to effectively have 20 targets by 2020. This simply shows you the 20 different goals and targets and what it shows you on the right-hand side it best global assessment, how well did we do? And also the global biodiversity outlook, how well did we do? And what you can actually see is if it's in yellow, it means we made some progress but we never achieved the target. If it's in red, we probably didn't make any progress or only very limited progress. Purple means actually we went backwards and if there are a couple of light blues, it means we largely made the target. The bottom line is in the targets that were established in 2010, we never met any of the targets fully over the last 10 years and in many cases, we made very limited or no progress at all. And this has to be considered when people think about what the post-2020 biodiversity framework and targets should look like. Why did we fail over the last 10 years and why should we be more confident that we can do better in the next 10 years? The next slide moves us to where are we with greenhouse gases? Well, if we want to meet the Paris target at 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or carbon dioxide, I would say, by 45% by 2030 relative to 2010. And that's roughly 50% below current emissions and we need net zero by 2050 to have a 50, 50% chance of 1.5. If we only reduce our emissions by 25% by 2030 and meet net zero by 2070, that would put us on a pathway to two degrees Celsius. Well, if you look at the current pledges that we've got, in reality, the emissions in 2030 are likely to be comfortable or higher than today. A recent analysis suggests in 2030, the emissions globally will 16% above 1990, which says we're currently on a pathway of three to four degrees Celsius, not 1.5 to two. The next slide says, boy, the bottom is the wedding cake. The bottom level is the environment, climate and biodiversity. And it says if we don't deal with climate and biodiversity and limit the loss of biodiversity, even restore biodiversity, limit climate change, it will affect the middle level, our production and consumption of things such as food. It will weaken our food and water security. It will undermine any attempt to make our cities more sustainable. And if that happens, it means we will not be successful and have impoverty alleviation. We will not be successful in reducing inequalities around the world. It will adversely affect economic development and peace and it will clearly threaten human health for a large number of reasons, not just pandemics, but for whole region, vector, waterborne diseases, malnutrition, et cetera. So it's crucial that we address climate change and loss of biodiversity as development issues, not environmental issues alone. Next slide. Well, the key is we need to transform our relationship with nature if we want a sustainable future. If we look at human knowledge, ingenuity, technology and cooperation, this can transform societies and economic economies and secure a sustainable future, but it will require a fundamental change in the technological, economic and social organization of society. And we really need to reconsider our world views, our norms, our values and our governance systems. We need major shifts in investments and regulation because they're the key to adjust and inform our transformation. A classical issue is we need to overcome the inertia and opposition from vested interests who want to maintain the status quo. The next slide says clearly we need to reduce, our demand for carbon intensive activities. We need to adopt low carbon solutions. We need to expand low carbon energy and we need sustainable use of our land if we want to meet the Paris targets. The next slide says if we want to actually conserve and restore biodiversity, what do we need to do? We simultaneously have to conserve, restore, we have to address climate change, we have to address overexploitation, pollution and the way we manage our land and we need sustainable production and reduced consumption. All of these need to be done simultaneously and they can be. The next slide talks about how we need to transform economic, financial and productive sectors and this will allow a shift to sustainability. We need to include natural capital in decision making. That is to say we need to complement the use of GDP as a measure of economic growth with inclusive wealth. Built capital, human capital and natural capital. GDP does not measure sustainable economic growth. Inclusive wealth is a much better measure of sustainable economic development. We need to eliminate environmentally harmful subsidies in energy, in agriculture, forest, mining and fisheries. We need to embrace a circular economy and we need to invest in the transition to a sustainable future. But we also need to recognize that the food, water and energy systems are not separable. These systems are highly inter-coupled. Therefore we need an integrated approach to our food, water and energy systems. If we want to meet growing energy needs, food needs, water needs in an equitable, resilient and environmentally friendly manner. Obviously, when we reduce our subsidies, hopefully, we can then invest in a low carbon economy, invest in sustainable agriculture, sustainable fisheries. The next slide moves us on to talking about how we need to have a healthy environment. This just focuses on one element of a healthy environment and that's zoonotic diseases. About 75% of all new infectious diseases have their origin in animals. There are potentially 700,000 viruses out there in animals and birds that could potentially pose a threat to human wellbeing. It's very clear we need to reduce the risk of future pandemics and we need to manage the risks much better if we get another pandemic. Therefore we need to think about a one health approach. We need to decrease deforestation. We need to limit the interaction between humans and wildlife. We need to limit the interactions between our livestock and wildlife because they can be an intermediate cause for the pandemic and we need more hygienic wet markets, not only in developing countries but also in the US. The next slide says that we have to have all actors working together. This is not just a role for governments. We need to work with international organisations, financiers, the private sector, NGOs, individuals and of course scientific and educational organisations. The next slide I'm not going to read all of it, just shows some of the messages for governments. They need to lead the way of actually looking at how we transform our economic and financial systems. They need to account for natural capital. They need to look at the environmental costs in our economic performance. They need to think about establishing carbon taxes, carbon prices, markets for carbon. We need to shift the harmful subsidies. They also need to take a lead role in transforming the food, energy and production system. Putting the right policies and implement the right technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to adapt to a changing climate. We need a resilient, climate resilient agricultural sector. All of these slides are on the web so you can look at this in more detail. The next slide simply goes into some of the same messages for UN agencies. What can UN agencies do to facilitate international cooperation? What can they do to transform our economic and financial system? What can they do to transform the food, energy and production systems? And the last slide that I'm going to show is effectively what can the finance sector? These can play the banks around the world at the national level, the international level, the world bank, the regional banks, the pension systems. All of these can really play a key role in actually changing the way we do financing. Everyone needs to say, what is their climate related and financial risk? What are the implications of the way we use natural resources, et cetera? And I won't go through this as I'm running out of time, but effectively in the paper, Making Peace for Nature, we show for all of the eight big actors about two dozen actions that they can all take to make the transformation we need to a sustainable world a reality. Thank you. Well, thank you, Bob, for that amazing presentation. I only wish we could... It's just fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today. Bob, you had a lot in your slides, and I just want to remind our audience that everything is available today, including Bob's slides and a link to Making Peace with Nature, everything is available online at www.esi.org. We will also have an archived webcast for people who want to go back and revisit Bob's presentation. And then also, it'll take us a couple of days, but we'll also have summary notes available for anyone who wants to skim through. It is now my privilege to introduce our second speaker of the day. Cristiana Figueres is a founding partner of Global Optimism, co-presenter of the Climate Podcast Outrage and Optimism, co-author of The Future We Choose, the Stubborn Optimists Guide to the Climate Crisis. Between 2010 and 2016, she was executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And during that time, her leadership and diplomacy helped deliver the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change. She's a member of multiple executive and advisory boards and a frequent public speaker and media commentator. She has degrees from Swarthmore College and the London School of Economics. Cristiana, it is great to welcome you to our briefing today. I'm looking forward to your remarks. Thank you very much. And now what a privilege and how difficult to follow my good friend, Bob Watson, but we will do our best. We will definitely do our best. Thank you very much for inviting me today. I thought I would do two things with the time allotted to me. One is to ground some of the information that you have received from Bob into a US reality. And the second is to give you an overview of what is actually being done on reduction of emissions. Luckily, we don't have to start from zero, but unluckily, we're very far behind. But to my first point, just to ground things very quickly into the US reality, we've just gone through, or those of you who live in the United States, the hottest summer on record. And one thing that I just wanted to pull out is the fact that floods continue to be the most common and in fact, the most deadly natural disasters in the United States. They have brought destruction to every state and nearly every county and they're getting worse. Just to give you a couple of data points on that, we are set to have 45% increase in floodplains in the United States over the next few decades. More than eight, almost nine million Americans live in areas that are susceptible to coastal flooding either on the East or the West Coast. And 41 million US citizens are at risk from flooding along rivers and streams. All of you will remember, just in the past few weeks, the terrifying views of Hurricane Ida in New York that left $50 billion of damage in its wake and drowned people in New York City. This is New York City. This is not Bangladesh. It's not India. It's not Nepal. It's not Tuvalu or Somal. This is New York City. So let us just really wake up to the fact that frankly climate disasters all over the world, not just in developing countries have become more and more unaffordable whether that's measured by cost or human lives and are on their way to becoming uninsurable. That is a very scary scenario. Just imagine a life in which we would not be able to insure our homes, our properties because the insurance companies would tell us uninsurable. The risk is just too high. In addition to that, let's please remember that we cannot go into a world in which runaway climate change is actually stopping any advance on any of the SDGs. The wedding cake that you saw from Bob explains it very clearly. What we have at the base is here are the environmentally-based SDGs, but they form the basis of survival and of development for all the rest of the aspects of human endeavors. And so if we don't get climate right, which includes in my book, Stopping Biodiversity Loss, then we are seriously, if not categorically, impeding our ability to be able to proceed on all of the sustainable development goals. So what do we need to do? Well, it's pretty clear. The Paris Agreement from 2015 was adopted not just by consensus, but unanimously. We do know that the United States went out for four years but it is back. So the historical Paris Agreement was adopted by 195 countries unanimously. First time in the history of the United Nations. It represents the blueprint toward managing most, but not all, of our risk of exposure to climate change. And what it says is that we have to be at zero net emissions globally by 2050 and in order to be there, we have to go through the portal of being at one half current global emissions by 2030 in order to stand a chance, but not even a guarantee of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade, which is almost two degrees Fahrenheit, which is what science tells us is the maximum warming that we can allow within the band of what is going to be doable or to which we could adapt either humans or in fact our infrastructure. Now, we're currently already beyond one degree. We're at 1.1 or almost hitting 1.2. You know what that actually means according to the latest science is that we will either reach or breach the 1.5, which is almost three degrees Fahrenheit as early as next decade, which is 10 years earlier than what science had originally estimated. So what science is telling us very definitively and very clearly is that warming and extreme vents are growing exponentially. This is no longer a linear curve. This is now an exponential curve. What I would like to put in front of you is an image of a race between two exponential curves. We have as defined by science and as we know from watching the news, we have an exponential curve of damage and human misery. We also have the beginning of an exponential curve of solutions. And whether we're able to face up to climate change or not is going to depend on which of those two exponential curves actually wins the race. So what do we have on the exponential curve of solutions? Well, let me start by governments. More than 110 governments have so far submitted a new or updated national action plan as requested and required by the Paris Agreement. That actually means that we have about 70% of global GDP under a net zero target by 2050. That's a good news, but it's not good news that those long-term targets are not being reflected in much shorter term targets, which is what science is demanding from us, which is, as I say, cutting by 50% our emissions by 2030. So even those commitments that are coming in are still far short of the level that we need to keep global warming from going beyond the 1.5 degree goal. That is the main focus of COP26, the annual conference of the parties, of all parties, all governments that will come together in Glasgow at the end of this year to report to each other what they have done since Paris and take on their new commitments of further ambition that they will be pursuing between now and 2030. So some progress there, but not enough. Further signs of progress now outside governments. I now just want to go through a couple of sectors. Let me first take the sector. I am sure that you are aware of the fact that electric vehicle sales are actually surging and they're surging to a combination of policy support, improvements in technology, especially battery technology and decrease in cost. So especially because of the support that they have received in the past four to five years in the EU and China, we now see that electrical vehicles rose by 40% in 2020 during the pandemic as overall car sales actually dropped. So very, very interesting counter trajectory being shown there by EV sales. We also know that we now have more or less 15 countries and 31 cities and regions that have announced plans to phase out their internal combustion engines, which means fossil fuel cars, including gasoline, diesel. Norway is phasing out by as early as 2025. California and the UK by 2035. France and Canada by 2040 and the list goes on. And very interestingly, those dates that are taken up by countries and cities are actually being moved up as technology advances and costs decline. The result of that is that the EVs, the electric vehicles that we now see on the market are already today displacing well over one million barrels of oil demand per day. And I will go in a little bit into what that actually means for the oil and gas sector, but one million barrels of oil actually being displaced by electric vehicles. And that actually means that oil demand has already peaked in all segments of road transport except commercial trucks. In commercial trucks, we have now the up and coming green hydrogen technology that will have a very, very similar effect on fossil fuels in the areas of heavy transport, both land and maritime. Yes, at a slower pace, but very certainly coming on. Switching over to the electricity sector now. You know, honestly in 2015, when we were adopting the Paris agreement, not in my wildest imaginations could I have possibly conceived that five years or six years, which is where we are right now, six years later, renewable energy for new electric capacity would actually already be cheaper, not just than installed fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas in nearly every market in the world, but actually in generating plants that have already paid for their investments. We have renewable energy that is now cheaper. That is an absolute dramatic transformation in the electricity markets of the world. Just in the United States, just in the United States, the US wind energy capacity increased by 17 gigawatts in 2020, which was 85% more than that, which was added the year before. And solar energy capacity increased by more than 16 gigawatts, also breaking all records. So just in the United States, the renewable energy installation capacity is already more than 50% higher than the previous record that had been set in 2016 and growing. The growth of wind and solar farms around the world, because it is not only in the United States, in fact, truly not all, mostly in China and other areas, means that the price is dropping every day. The price is dropping every day and it is a truism that the cost of renewable energy will never be as expensive as it is today, because tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, it will be cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. Now, on the incumbent side, on the fossil fuels side, the International Energy Agency headquartered in Paris is the world's authority on energy projections. And this year, for the first time, they have come out very clearly saying that in order to protect global economy, there simply is no more space for any new coal, oil, or gas explorations. That's it. This is it. Whatever we have now is what we have to use until we get over fully to renewable energies and other clean energies. And we cannot explore any more oil and gas. We cannot mine any more coal. What is interesting, however, is that the market is realizing that as well. So a couple of examples. Earlier this year, ExxonMobile, Chevron, ConocoPhillips had their credit ratings lowered because the risk profile that was put out by S&P global ratings recognized that due to climate change and weak earnings, those companies' credit ratings actually had to be taken down. That is probably the first time that that has happened. On the other hand, you have, next era, a Florida-based solar and power generator, which is the world's largest solar and wind power generator, had a market capitalization of almost $140 billion surpassing ExxonMobile, while at the very exact time, ExxonMobile lost more than half of its value since the start of 2020. So you see that the transition is occurring definitely in one direction to a decarbonizing the global economy, including the economy of the United States. That direction is irreversible. The problem is it is not happening fast enough. In the financial sector, in the financial sector, I would say that is the sector that I have observed over the past 18 months, perhaps, that has done the most dramatic transformation of any other sector. Today we have 40 banks of the largest banks in the world, situated and headquartered in 20 countries that have actually taken on a net zero commitment for their entire portfolio by 2050. We also have 70 major asset managers, including giants like BlackRock and Vanguard that have committed themselves to net zero investment portfolios by 2050 and are now beginning to establish a 2030 target because they understand that the 2030 target is in fact, even more important than the 2050. Those asset managers are worth $32 trillion dollars. You also have a quality, these are all sets of coalitions. You also have an asset owner coalition totaling $6.6 or $6.7 trillion that have committed to net zero portfolios and are beginning to bring in even the soaring wealth funds of the world, which will take those total assets under management much, much higher. So you can see that the financial sector is moving and they're moving, frankly, not because they want to save the planet, that's not their job. Their job is to protect the value of their assets, the value of their investment portfolios, the value of their debt. And that is why they are taking this because they understand that high carbon is equivalent to stranded assets. And that given the decarbonization trajectories that we have, if you don't move out of high carbon assets, you are basically devaluing in an exponential fashion, you're devaluing the value of your portfolio. In fact, even the Bank of China has now come out saying that they are no longer going to finance new coal in overseas and that follow as President Xi Jinping's announcement in New York in September at the UN General Assembly saying that China as a whole will no longer finance coal abroad. That's important because China was the last country that was still financing coal abroad. And now we have all G7 countries pulling out of coal with which we have basically determined that the coal industry is on its last legs into definite demise. To bring you just an example from the United States at the end of last year, the New York State Common Retirement Fund which is the third largest US public pension plan said that it would divest from riskiest oil and gas companies by 2025. And they pledged to reach net zero portfolio by 2040. There is now a group of countries under the title of the Climate Pledge which is another forward-leaning coalition all of whom are pledging to bring their companies or financial institutions to net zero by 2040 because they realize we have totally run out of time. And if they want to protect their business continuity or the value of their assets for their beneficiaries, they have to pull out of carbon and move their assets over to clean and green technologies. So the financial sector definitely doing what Bob has just told us, they can very much accelerate the transition over to a cleaner and greener future. I wish I had the same data points for land-based solutions and for everything to do with land, be it agriculture, be it standing forest, I don't. I don't and that whole sector that as you heard from Bob represents anywhere between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse gas emissions is frankly the Cinderella of all of the world's efforts. We have not paid enough attention to everything to do with biodiversity with land-based solutions. These things are two sides of the same coin. We cannot fulfill Paris Agreement or climate targets without taking care of our land-based challenges and the opposite. If we do not address climate change, we will definitely see the demise of biodiversity. So those two things need to be understood as being hand-in-hand. And coming to a conclusion here, I want to remind you that failure on both climate and biodiversity is entirely possible. And I'm sure you know that because doom and gloom news is all over the place. I also want to remind you that success on climate change and biodiversity is also possible. Both are possible. And we stand right at the crossroads between those two futures. This decade, the decade of the 20s is the most important decade in the history of humanity without any exaggeration. Because by the end of this decade, we will substantially have decided whether we're going toward a better future or whether we are condemning future generations to constant and increasingly, exponentially increasing destruction and human misery. Now, we also know from history that it is precisely at these moments of deepest doubt and deepest darkness that most of our transformation occurs. Let's remember the I have a dream moment. It is in those dark moments that we have to refuse to accept the status quo, that we have to pull up our bootstraps and create the possibility of a better world because no one is going to do it for us. It is up to us. And you know, the imperatives are stacked. They're stacked on top of each other. The science imperative you just heard from Bob, you can derive for yourself the moral imperative. The technological imperative I have given you a few examples. The financial imperative has been recognized by the financial sector. The market forces are with us. And there are such strong interlinguages to all of the other SDGs that by now, public expectation is that governments, businesses, will not only not be part of the harm that they will actively be part of the solution because that is the only way that society's interests are going to be protected. So my friends, I could actually conclude that we are sailing in the right direction. We're incontrovertibly decarbonizing, but not quick enough. We need stronger wins to sail much quicker and those wins need to be based on policies and incentives, regulations to provide stronger wins to the private sector, for them to do the needy. The clock is ticking, 2030 is our deadline. By then, we will know whether we have a chance to succeed or not. It is, my friends, the race between two exponential curves. At the moment, we're not winning that race, but we can. And we're the only generation that can actually make that happen. Thanks. Well, thank you for that remarkable presentation, Christiana, thank you so much. I really love the imagery of the race between the two exponential curves. And I think I speak for everyone at ESI when I say, we would put our bet on solutions. And I also really appreciated your comments about land-based climate change solutions, something that's really near and dear to our hearts at ESI. And I think we would agree too that they also don't get the attention they deserve. I am going to, I see Bob has turned his video on. I'm going to invite our co-moderator today to turn hers on, Rosina Bierbaum. Rosina will lead our conversation today with Christiana and Bob. And Rosina is the Roy at Western Chair in Natural Economics at the University of Maryland. She's a professor in Dean Emerita at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and the Environment. She chairs the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the Global Environment Facility and served as a science advisor to the Global Adaptation Commission. She has extensive public service, including with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. And perhaps most of all, important for today, she is a member of ESI's Board of Directors and a great friend. So Rosina, I will turn it over to you to lead our conversation. It's great to see you today. Thank you. I just want to start by saying that last sentence again of Christiana, we cannot be the generation that leaves the next generation a completely irreversible problem. It's really a great honor to question these two incredible heroes of the planet. And the last time Christiana and Bob and I were all together in person was actually 10 years ago in Antarctica when we were already seeing the ice melt and the species shift. Those impacts that are now so much more evident, not just in Antarctica, but in Greenland and also the Arctic, on the ice. And now we understand, as we just heard, the intertwining of climate change and biodiversity and inequity and human health and sustainable development. So we really need to make up for lost time. And we also have to catch up on enhancing adaptation to the changes that are already underway and the more that are about to come. So let me start with Bob. You indicated that climate change will become the driving force in biodiversity loss if we don't achieve the Paris goals. And with both treaties, biodiversity and climate change being revisited this year, we clearly need to find synergies and fast by 2030, as you both eloquently argued. So I wanna focus in on this intersection and this decade and ask a specific question. What role do you think that nature-based solutions can play in combating both climate change and biodiversity while also making sure we enhance health and livelihoods? So Bob. They can clearly play a significant role, but they're not a panacea. The first thing to remember is they must not displace our thinking about transitioning to a low carbon energy economy. So the first goal must still be to really decarbonize our energy system in production and use. But once we've done that, there is no question that some nature-based solutions can clearly be beneficial to both climate change and biodiversity and some of the SDGs. There's no question the highest priority is conservation. Let's not lose the biodiversity we've already got. And so protected areas, well-managed, well-designed can play a role. But we have to remember that even if the biodiversity convention succeeds in establishing a 30 by 30 protected area philosophy, that is say 30% of the land, 30% of the oceans will be protected, 70% is still outside of protected areas. So clearly protected areas, well-designed to be climate resilient, well-managed can play a role. But we have to look at the other 70%. Clearly, the key issue is first restoration. Reforestation with native species, not with monocultures, a fast-growing species. So restoration can be good, but we also have to realize there can be unintended consequences. Large-scale aphoristation and large-scale bioenergy using monoculture plants that could displace native vegetation or arable land can have negative effects on biodiversity and on food and water security. So yes, there's huge scope for well-designed nature-based solutions. They must be put in a social context because it will be very place-based. And the only comment I would make is one needs to think through right from the beginning of the design of a nature-based solution. What are the implications for biodiversity? What are the implications for climate? What are the implications for human well-being, the SDGs? And then there are some very, very good opportunities, but we have to really be careful about the unintended consequences. Thanks for that, Bob. I have a follow-up question and I'll invite Christiana to also offer her thoughts on this as well. And keeping in mind that we have a very large online audience today and a good portion of that online audience are specifically people engaged in policymaking here in the United States and also abroad. What are the climate actions that in your opinion are most important and feasible for the United States and other countries as well to implement that will have a significant impact on reducing emissions, but also address those interconnections you described between climate, biodiversity, and pollution? I think they're two-fold, which is the implicit, if not explicit in my talk. The first really is transforming the economic system. We need to get rid of these, but first, subsidies in energy, in agriculture, forestry, and mining that undermine both biodiversity and stimulate unintended climate change. So we've got to get rid of it and we then have to transform that money into funding sustainable activities in energy and in agriculture. Secondly, given it is both the energy sector and the agricultural sector, there are two of the major sectors undermining climate change or causing climate change and undermining biodiversity. We have to really look at those sectors very, very carefully. And as we put our policies and use of technologies together in energy, agriculture, and water, we have to again look to see where are the synergies and where are the trade-offs? I would also point out that this, individuals can make a difference. We've got to stop wasting food, water, and energy. We have to think about more sustainable diets, more plant-based. I'm not saying go to be a vegan or a vegetarian, but more balanced diets can play a role. But if you had to say to me, what's the one thing I would do is I would transform the economic system, recognize the value of nature, but not just the economic value, there's social value, there's biophysical value, but we really have to change our markets. Christiana, did you want to comment on the question of linking the two treaties and or what you think the US should do first before I have a different question coming for you? But we can't hear you right now. Sorry, I think I muted myself so that Bob didn't have to deal with my background sounds here. I totally agree with Bob on that. And of course, one of the easiest quote unquote, and I put quotes around that word because it's not intended to underestimate the effort that is needed, but the easiest way to transform the way we value goods and services is to put a price on pollution. And global pollution and local pollution actually stem from the same sources, right? From fossil fuels. So putting a price on pollution would help our human health as well as the planetary health. Now, as I say, quotation marks around the easiest because I know that that is both in the United States as well as internationally, still quite a difficult conversation. But if you can step away from the ideology, if you can step away from the politics with a small P and you can actually look at what we have to do in the politics of the world, in the politics of society, then you understand that it only makes fundamental sense to put a price on pollution. It is just, and if we were able to do that, that would be the most effective economic instrument that would lead to accelerating many of the transformations we've been talking about. We actually had a price on pollution years ago. And then it was called the CDM, the Clean Development Mechanism. And then for many reasons that we don't need to go into that market collapsed. It is no different than the pollution markets that are still operative in the United States. No different from a conceptual point of view and is definitely the one thing that I would say would really get us much farther than where we are now. Thanks. So the question that I was gonna move to for you, Christiana, is collaborative diplomacy. And I realized that you started working in this arena around the same time that Bob did, which is around the time of the 1992 Rio summit that led to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was ratified under President George H.W. Bush by the U.S. and is still the law of the land. And as we heard though, of course the landmark Paris 2015 agreement would not have happened without you and it surely did not happen spontaneously by any means. It was years of hard work that you have called collaborative diplomacy. And boy, do we need collaborative diplomacy now. So again, we are in the run-up to these two treaties. And I wondered if you could talk about the roles for levels of governance across scale, from local to state to federal to international to work together to bring to a successful conclusion each of these conference of parties. Yeah, and there, Rosina, I would like to separate two things because the biodiversity and the Climate Change Convention are UN conventions. That already establishes that it is only national governments who actually sit at the table and hold the pen. Do you want to change that? Should we change that? At this point, that's the way it is across all of the United Nations. So it is the direct work of national governments to come to whatever conclusions they're gonna come to at both the upcoming climate and the biodiversity convention split between this year and next. And whatever they decide there has to be understood as being only the tiny little tip of the iceberg. Because the fact is that if you just look at greenhouse gas emissions, the national government of any country is not directly responsible for any meaningful level of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, in most countries, the national government, its own operation is the equivalent of 5% of national emissions or maybe even less. So what the national governments do is they are setting the direction at the national level. If you want to call that the economy-wide direction or those that are more skeptical call it just a formality. The fact is it only sets the direction and identifies what the tip of the iceberg is. Most of the action is actually underneath that. Most of the action, most of the implementation of whatever is agreed to has to come from those who don't sit at the table of these treaties, which are the other levels of governments, state, city or provinces, depending on how you are divided up in countries and certainly business sector and investment sector underneath all of that. So it is proven that in those countries that are being most effective at reducing their emissions, there is a very, very clear alignment of policies, incentives and regulations that go across the governance vertical from national to state or provincial to city, sometimes even to town. That alignment, if you're able to align policies, incentives and regulations along that whole governance vertical, you do get the most effective action. And especially if those policies, incentives and regulations actually reach out to business and to individual behavior changes, as Bob has already mentioned. Because let's be frank. If we had 20, 30, 40 years to be dealing with this, we could probably afford the irresponsibility of saying, frankly, this is only the responsibility of national governments and we're not gonna do anything about it. The fact is we've run out of time. So this is, the captain of the boat has to say all hands on deck, all hands on deck. This is no longer the responsibility only of national governments. This is everybody's responsibility from the head of state to the single mother doing her best job with her four children all the way up and down. Because we all have to contribute from our different points of influence. But an alignment of purpose and of direction is absolutely necessary in order to be able to squeeze ourselves through that very, very difficult door that is 20, 30. If we do not align policies, incentives, regulations, behaviors and investments, we will not be able to do it. Thank you for that amazing answer. Bob has been nodding vigorously the whole time you've been answering. So I suspect he wants to add a comment to this too. And I think what you raise is very interesting. When the US left the Paris Accord you did see this amazing assemblage of mayors and governors and universities and NGOs and businesses join in the United States in something called we are still in to try to add up to what the US had promised. And I think you're exactly right. If you can build that coalition and quickly things can happen in this very important decade. But Bob, I'm sure you wanted to add something before I move on to a question directly. I mean both Kristiana and I have said the same thing. We need all actors to work together. So you need all levels of government and you need interactions with the finance community, the business sector, NGOs, et cetera. Which means we need a new polycentric governance structures where all voices can be heard but crucially that we're vested interests who want to maintain the status quo cannot dominate those polycentric governance structures. So we have to deal with those that don't want change. What this also means is we need trust and trust is in short supply. We need developed countries to trust each other. We need developed and developing countries to trust each other. There needs to be trust between the private sector and the NGOs and governments. In other words, we have to all have a common vision for the future and trust that we're all working in the same direction for the same reasons. And I do see quite often people say, well, why is that government doing this or why is that private sector doing this? And I often start from a position of distrust. So we have to build up trust in a really important way. I am optimistic in the sense that the World Economic Forum have clearly now recognized that environmental issues are absolutely central to sustainable growth. So two years ago, when they looked at the five largest risks to the private sector, they were all environmental and climate change was explicit by adversity. This year four were environmental and the fifth one was a pandemic which is related to the environment. So the fact that the World Economic Forum, World Business Council on Sustainableism, they're starting to see the centrality of this and Christiana did it incredibly well when she talked about the financial sector. There is at least reason for optimism, but as Christiana said, it's the direction is right, it's the speed that really needs to be revved up. Yes, I agree. And if you get places like the World Economic Forum saying we should care about these, that's much more powerful than the group of scientists out there saying one more time. And in the most recent World Economic Forum report, as you say, pandemic's joined for other environmental issues. And I think this recognition that one health, human health, ecological health, climate health, they're all connected is really important. Both of you have talked about emerging, the need for more public private partnerships and the emerging interest in the business and investment community, but have focused pretty much on what we absolutely need to do on the mitigation side, the emissions reduction side, which absolutely has to happen and it has to happen quickly. But I wanna say, I don't see the demand for either adaptation action or action on biodiversity, which seems to not get the same kind of respect and attention as it should. And so I wonder, Bob, if you could comment on how in particular, we can focus on adaptation as we think about climate change and infrastructure and health and how we could further that. For example, we're seeing a lot of interest in building back better after COVID. How can you access that and get some adaptation in there too? I mean, I was an ecologist, so I have to still call for thinking about protecting the ecosystems in ways that people... Well, I think you said it, Rosina. Most people, when they think about climate change, tend to talk about mitigation. But of course, the Paris Agreement equally talks about adaptation and they also talk about the financing mechanism, the $100 billion a year is needed for developing for both mitigation and adaptation. So I think, well, much of the discussion is around mitigation. There is indeed a clear recognition that we've already changed in the Earth's climate and therefore we already have to start to adapt and the more that we actually change the Earth's climate, the more we're going to have to adapt, basically. And there's a clear recognition, it's poor countries and poor people in poor countries that are most at risk, basically. But clearly, many of the nature-based solutions that I mentioned earlier, if well-designed, can actually be good for mitigation, for saving biodiversity and for adaptation. I just don't think there's enough of a discussion. But clearly, when I mentioned the World Economic Forum and especially about a year ago, they came up with a couple of really strong documents about the importance of biodiversity for the business community. The first one was nature at risk. And it pointed out two obvious things. First is, to what degree does the private sector depend on nature? And I think they're more and more recognising the dependence of nature of many of the sectors. And the second one is they have a footprint on nature. And boy, they're nervous that if they have a footprint on nature, they may get regulated. So they want to reduce their footprint on nature and be almost a first mover to be more sustainable. So while I think there's a far more discussion around mitigation, I do believe there's a good recognition about the importance of adaptation in all of the sectors. And there is a good recognition of the importance of conserving and restoring biodiversity. But once again, it all comes down to partnerships between government policies, actions by the private sector and they need to work together. And also the importance of civil society, basically telling governments, we want a sustainable future and they should also tell the private sector, we want sustainable products, basically, goods and services. So I think it's more, we need to do far more on adaptation, but it all has to now be looked at together. Mitigation, adaptation of climate change, conservation and restoration of biodiversity, all in the context of the UN Sustainable Development Goals where things such as equity, poverty, all have to be looked at together. Thank you, Bob. So we do need to make adaptation and biodiversity what companies would call investable assets. Dan and I were hoping to... Brazina, can I jump in on that one? Yes, because I totally agree on, how do you make them investable assets? I think that's the problem, right? We are definitely much more aware today than we were five years ago about both the need for rapid adaptation as well as for the protection of our natural resources, of our growing and natural resources. However, we do not have business models for them. We do not have the same business models for replanting or restoring degraded soil or for any adaptation measures against desertification or sea level rise. We don't have business plans for any of those activities that would be akin to a business plan of investment in a solar farm, in a wind farm. And that's the problem. And the reason why we don't have business plans that would attract the levels of capital that are necessary because right now both adaptation as well as protection of nature and biodiversity are tracking philanthropic funds. God bless them. Thank you so much, right? And we had a fantastic harvest of philanthropic funding for that now at the General Assembly. But it is still far away from the levels that we need. The only way that those activities would be able to attract the levels of capital that are needed but go into the trillions, way beyond the millions that we have now is again to put a price on pollution. And once you put a price on pollution, then that price in and of itself actually develops the business plan for investment into those activities. So that's, you know, for me, that's the crux because of course you can say, well, capitalism is the problem to begin with and we should do away with capitalism. Well, if that's your stand, then, you know, I retire my argument for a value, a price on pollution. But if we assume that capitalism is far from what we want but that it can actually suffer quite well from an upgrading and an upscaling by putting value where value really is and pursuing shareholder capitalism or stakeholder capitalism instead of shareholder capitalism, now we have a potential in-road for those kinds of activities but we absolutely need a price on pollution because otherwise that deal flow, that financial flow will not occur at the level of trillions dollars, which is what we need. That's right. And there will never be enough public money to equal all those trillions of dollars. We're gonna try to cram in two more questions that we would like both of you to answer in probably the next five minutes. So we'll see how well we do because this is so interesting, I wish we had hours more. So, but the question I was gonna pose to you, Christiana, was you run global optimism, which is focused not just on environment but also social change. And boy, yes, we need optimism but we also need the social and behavioral change to effect quickly the kinds of things that we're talking about this decade yet. And so I wanna ask, how do you think we, the broad community can make biodiversity crisis and the climate crisis real to the average person on the street, whether they're in a wealthy country or as well as those living in poverty with few resources, how do you make them care and motivate it to address it this decade? I think we need both a push and a pull. On the push side, we need to puncture the myth that climate change or biodiversity laws is affecting only far away developing countries or generations way down in the future. That is absolutely not the case. It is already affecting industrialized countries, may I remind you about the fires in California, the fires in Australia, the floods in New York, in Miami, the hurricanes. I mean, this is not so. The worst summer in Europe, this is not so. It is not true that this is only affecting far away developing countries. It is affecting everyone. Developing countries have less capacity to adapt and react to it and they're less responsible. That's the huge injustice. But climate and biodiversity laws are impacting everyone. So on the push side, we have to wake up to the fact that this is already here, that we are suffering it and that we have to stand up and grab this by the horns and do what is necessary to do. On the pull side, Rosina, I don't think that we have yet presented to the public at large a compelling enough vision of what a decarbonized and regenerative world feels like. We're still mentally in the doom and gloom. We're still trying to avoid the worst. We have not moved away from a scarcity mentality into an abundance mentality. Let us begin to imagine what does it mean to live in a decarbonized world? What does it mean to be in a world in which every single company is not just reducing its emissions, it's actually turned into a regenerative company that every policy and measure and incentive is actually about regenerating our capacity to not just survive but thrive on this world. We do not have that picture clear enough. And I have spoken to the creatives in the creative industry at Nauseum about there's a huge vacuum to be filled here because we need, we cannot create what we cannot imagine. And so we have to set our sights on that much, much better future and begin to understand that it's possible. It is entirely possible. We just have to set our minds to it and get it done because collectively we have the technology, the capital, the policies, we have everything that we need. But we have to be able to imagine that much better future. So that for me is the pull side. We have to feel pulled into a better future in addition to being pushed out of the terrible present that we have. There you go. Let me add one comment. There's no question that behavior change at the individual community, even government, private sector is badly needed. But behavior change on its own is rarely large scale unless you have appropriate government policies and even financing incentives. If you look at smoking, recycling, seat belts, all of those started with small scale behavior change. But to get it completely absorbed by the community at a large scale, government policies helped to stimulate behavior change and having financial incentives. So in my opinion, can't look at behavior change independent of policies and financial incentives that are a package that goes together. Yeah, so very good comment. I think thinking back to our youth, that would be the three speakers, even the generation before us coming out of war thought about the generation to follow and created all sorts of incentive programs to improve education and infrastructure and rehabilitation. And I think one really interesting thing is this proposed climate core, more than 50% of those who are in the age bracket of 18 to 30 are interested in participating in this. So it is definitely something that is very real to this generation and the fact that we need to do something in 10 years. And also back to what you said, Christiana, it's absolutely clear. If you can make the sense of place changing that these things will cause in a snapshot when we show students that by the time they're our age, if they live in Texas, they will have more than 250 days that are more than 95 degrees, that gives you an image of that is not my sense of place now and that is not a sense of place I want. So both what the future we don't want, and as you so eloquently said, the future we do want is very important to describe. And I think this will be our last question and I wanna ask of both of you because we have online with us now hundreds of young professionals and students watching this who are gonna need to finish the work that our generation won't get done on sustainable development. And I wanna ask each of you, what is your advice to them? It can be anything from educational training to how to work to achieve policy change to writing to your parliamentarian or your member. But if you could speak to the several hundred young professionals out there, what is your advice and Bob, maybe we'll let you go first. The first thing I would say is make sure you vote and make sure you vote for politicians that care about your future, that they care about environmental issues and they care about a sustainable world. So one of the most important things you can do is to vote for the appropriate politicians. You can also get involved in the policy process, the political process to help get the change that we need. Youth activism is absolutely crucial and I'm very impressed by the youth activism. So be knowledgeable about the facts, be knowledgeable but then really be advocates for the change that you won and of course let the private, make your purchasing power be consistent, purchase from those private sector companies that also care about a sustainable future. Thank you, Bob. And Christiana will give you the last word before turning around. I would only add to that list because I totally agree with every single item on Bob's list. I would add to that list. Frankly, keep up the pressure on us, absolutely. Because this decade counts more than any other in human history. And if you are 20 or 30 or maybe even in your early 40s, the fact is that you won't be at the big decision tables until after 2030. So you need to keep up the pressure on my generation and the one right under me because this is the decade. So keep up the pressure, hold us accountable day in and day out. Number two, do not operate from anger and blame. Operate out of constructive meaningful engagement because it will make you more powerful because it will mean that you will have a much broader sphere of influence and you will feel better about yourself that from wherever you are, no matter what age you are, you can start so many different initiatives that I have heard from hundreds, if not thousands of young people around the world of what they can do right there where they are without softening the pressure on adults but start the meaningful engagement because my number three is we have to understand that this is not a photo. This is a film. This is long-term consequences that we'll be playing out over decades, if not centuries. And so at this point, you all need to start working up those climate change addressing muscles and you need to go to that gym. You need to start your meaningful engagement now because we will need it or you will need it throughout the rest of your life. You will be in a life that is unfolding in a permanently changed world and you need to explore right now your agency, strengthen your agency while you remind us of the urgency. That was amazing, both of you. I can't think of anyone who should pass off the marathon torches. That would be more exciting to follow than the two of you. And just as an educator myself, I do have to say I think this next generation is absolutely up to it. They are more naturally systems thinkers and can think across ecology, climate, biodiversity, human health, infrastructure, economics, the private sector, much better than those of us who were trained to be narrow and deep in a particular discipline. So thank you, my two heroes of the planet and I think now of the entire cohort watching us. And I turn it back over to you, Dan, for some final comments. Great, well, thank you so much, Rosina, for moderating a great discussion. Thank you, Christiana and Bob. I've had the best seat in the house for the last 90 or so minutes. It was a terrific experience and a wonderful conversation such a privilege to be in the zoom where it happened. And it really means a lot that you took time out of your busy schedules to join us and it's been really wonderful to get to know you even just a little as the briefing came together. Rosina, thank you so much for leading such a great conversation and also for your guidance and wisdom as part of the extended ESI family. And I think credit where credit's due. This conversation actually was originally Rosina's idea. So thank you for that. I would like to also thank those who have made this briefing series possible. That includes our honorary co-sponsor, the British Embassy Washington and our partner, Henry M. Jackson Foundation. Thank you very much for your generous support. The slide that you can see right now is just an overview of our upcoming briefings. The briefing series will resume next Friday, October 15th with momentum on climate adaptation and continue the following week with the role of international climate finance on October 20th and the negotiation what's on the table on October 22nd. I hope you'll join us for this full slate of congressional education programming related to COP26. You can visit www.esi.org and RSVP for the entire series. And when you do, please don't forget to subscribe to our new daily newsletter for COP26, the Glasgow Dispatch and our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. I'd also like to take a quick moment before we conclude to thank everyone on Team EESI who helped make today possible. That includes Dan Oh, Dan O'Brien, Omri Laporte, Emma Johnson, Anna McGinn, Amber Todorov and Savannah Bertrand. And also thanks to our fall interns, Isabella, Valerie and Roshni for helping with everything today. I would also invite everyone who watched us today to take a moment to complete the survey. It means a lot when our audience completes the survey. We read every response. I promise you, if you have thoughts about how we can improve our programming, if you had any technical issues we should work on, if you have suggestions for going forward, any feedback, we really, really appreciate it. We hope it only takes about two minutes or so and it really does mean a lot to us to have your feedback. We are at the end, we are about 101 Eastern time, PM. So we will go ahead and close it down. Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Christiana. Thank you, Rosina for joining us today. I extend to everyone my best wishes and a happy weekend to everyone.