 recording in progress and on behalf of the epic colloquium we would like to welcome our delegations back to Tufts for this official opening of our simulation so we were super elated to meet you all yesterday and continue to be fruitful and we have very high hopes for the solutions you come up with at the end of the simulation. Throughout this forum we hope to hold productive discussion in debate surrounding climate change and see all the work that you all have been putting in throughout the year in action. Given that the climate crisis has been named Code Red for Humanity by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the global community can no longer treat the climate crisis as an impending threat but an active existential peril which directly impacts global peace security in our fragile earth ecosystems. It is critical that we as the newest generation in the political arena push our members of government to set aside political differences and come together as a global community. Mitigating the effects of the climate crisis is only feasible if we act immediately and together which while we still have the chance to do so. Luckily there are many people working tirelessly to address these problems. Troubling a path for others to follow in in addressing the critical threat of climate change. Today we are lucky to host one such individual Dave Cavell an influential public servant who currently serves as senior advisor to John Kerry president Biden's presidential envoy on climate. He will give the Hunter Farnham Inquiry Memorial Lecture named in honor of another longtime public servant an IGL advisory board member in an inquiry mentor. Dave Cavell has worked as a senior advisor and assistant attorney general for the state of Massachusetts participating in many many high profile cases. He also ran for a congressional seat during the 2020 elections for Massachusetts fourth district. Worked as President Obama's speechwriter from 2015 to 2017 and most importantly he was a tough jumbo. It's crazy. So with that I'll hand it off to you. Well thank you. Thank you so much. Most of that is even true. Do I take my mask off? Do I leave it on? Are you sure? Happy Friday and most of all thank you for being here. This is a really wonderful program. Of course I was incredibly honored to say yes as soon as I got the opportunity to come back. The truth is I always make a point of coming back to Tufts campus just because it's the best university in America. That's why. I'm also just you'll have to put up with this. I'm just like overwhelmed that this building exists. This was a parking lot the last time I was on this campus and this is very strange to me. But hello. Thank you all so much for being here and thank you for putting me out of work because you guys are going to solve the climate change crisis this weekend from what I understand and we won't need to worry about it anymore which is a huge relief. So I'll just start by doing a few slides to go through sort of where things stand and you know how I've been involved in this issue in my career and then I figure we're going to take some questions and please feel free to ask whatever you want whatever's on your mind and hopefully I'll be able to answer some of it. So the title of the presentation actually is where I wanted to start. What are we going to do about it section? So the it came to me at an interesting moment in my career. So this photo this is going to be the first of a lot of photos over the next 10 or so minutes that seem pretty much just like an excuse for me to brag about people that I've gotten the opportunity to work with. I hope it is mostly also just a sense of how many wonderful people there are who are working on these issues. So this photo seems like it should be one of those that I'm like really excited to be in and have blown up to this size in my living room. What room we're in in this photograph? Yes. Yes there you go. Okay good. So I don't remember who he is but this is the current president of the United States Joe Biden. But if you notice nobody in this photo if you really start looking closely a lot of people look pretty upset. There's a number of people who are actively crying in this photograph. One of them is up there. I think Peter is crying over here. She's crying. Sana and there is pretty much only one person in this photograph who is not crying and it's me. And that's because I often found President Obama to be hilarious and could not help myself from smiling and laughing at his jokes as corny as they sometimes were. But this photo was taken at a tough moment. It was the morning after the 2016 presidential election. So this is Wednesday. We had been up the speechwriters we'd been up expecting to put the finishing touches on on on a speech announcing the beginning of the transition to the Hillary Clinton presidency. And at about three o'clock in the morning we recognized that wasn't going to happen. And so we got maybe two hours of sleep and came back and continued to work on it that morning. And the president heard that a lot of folks on the team were very upset and brought us into the Oval Office to sort of talk about the moment and give us his initial thoughts on what was happening. And he said a few things talked about in the way that he always does. I mean it's sort of easy to be the easy going Barack Obama when everything's going well. To me it was always more impressive that he was the same when things weren't going well. And this was an example of that. You know he talked about how you know if you were going to give up the first or the second or the third time you were disappointed you should never go into public service because you were always going to be disappointed at times and you had to make your peace with that. But one of the things he said that always stuck with me was that he said you know look I'm I wasn't going to be president in a few months no matter what happened in the selection. And so if you're upset and I can tell that a lot of you are if you're upset about these issues if you're upset about what's happening in the world and if you want to make a difference then my question is what are you going to do about it? I mean I'm not going to be president you all have an opportunity a lot of you are just beginning your careers what are you going to do about it? And I want you to think about that and you don't have to tell me right now you don't have to tell me today but take the week take a few weeks take the month talk to people in your life that care about you and that you care about and think about what your answer could be to those questions. And so that was pretty impactful for me because I realized that was a question I'd always been asking. Now again in the days that followed I mean literally I was laughing a lot in a lot of these photographs and the people in my office in the days that followed would congratulate me on the impending Trump presidency and so they didn't realize I was so excited about the selection but what are you going to do about it? I mean that was a question that I'd been asking at Tufts it was a question that my parents had taught me to ask from a young age if I saw things in the world that I thought could be better if I saw things that were unfair my question should be what can I what can I do who can I help who's working on this issue and can I be a part of helping them and so this was my first job out of out of Tufts I was in a program called Teach for America this is me wearing a Red Sox jersey in the South Bronx in New York about a mile from Yankee Stadium and I went to be a fourth grade teacher at a public school because I wanted to contribute and teaching was a career that my mother had been in before she became a lawyer and it was something that had always been something I'd considered and it was a place where I felt like a lot of the other teachers were asking themselves that same question a lot of them had gone in it because they wanted to educate they wanted to help people they wanted to be part of educating young minds and doing good work and that was a lot of what I saw but a lot of what I saw was also that there were inequalities that weren't solvable in my opinion one classroom at a time as heroic as those teachers were and my colleagues were there were more students than desks in my classroom my first day there were 32 students and 29 chairs in that classroom and the the systemic inequalities the systemic racism the environmental injustice in the South Bronx in New York were was obvious and again I felt like my question was what can I do about that and then I had an opportunity to work with somebody who I thought was going to to give me some answers to those questions so this is somebody that I doubt many of you recognize does anybody recognize who this person is in this photograph for me one person two people okay yes who is that Deval Patrick and who was Deval Patrick he was the governor of Massachusetts very good yes so from 2006 until 2014 Deval Patrick was the governor of Massachusetts and these were the issues that he talked about he talked about justice he talked about equity he talked about you know what we needed to do and could do together and in fact he had a political consultant from Chicago named David Axelrod who said you know I think we can run campaigns a little bit differently you know he gave us a slogan together we can and he implemented a lot of a lot of strategies which became useful for the folks that I worked for after Governor Patrick so this is another example of the fact that Michelle Obama just cannot take a bad photograph apparently and I can't take a good one but this is this was during that time that I had this incredible opportunity to work with President Obama and Mrs. Obama in the White House and there again I realized that was the question that had brought both of them into this work was you know what can I do about it what am I gonna do about this and President Obama talked about that a lot that that's why he became a community organizer that's why he wanted to work with other people in public service and that despite the frustrations of the work and often as you probably remember it was frustrating deeply frustrating that basic question drove President Obama to just say like okay yeah I'm still frustrated we're not doing enough so what are we gonna do about it what else can we do about it what more can we do and so when that when that administration ended when that conversation ended that's when I ended up working continuing to work in public service I thought about taking a break and I decided to stay in the work okay again who is this but I'm sitting next to that me is the easy one I'm gonna give you that one that's me who who else is in that footprint who is who is she again that is more a Healy and who is more Healy she is Attorney General and yes of Massachusetts and may in the future she's now running for governor of Massachusetts and may very well be governor but she was Attorney General of Massachusetts at this point and was that was a question that she and the lawyers in that office and an attorney's general offices across the country ask on a daily basis because they have the opportunity to go to court to overturn for instance the travel ban that President Trump put into effect in his first week in the presidency to sue Exxon mobile and get them to reveal documents that show that they knew that climate change was real and happening as far back as the 60s to sue opioid manufacturers the list goes on but every single attorney in that office their job basically on a daily basis is to protect people in their rights and so that attracted me to the office and and kept me there and it was a reminder that there are things that we can do if we work together even on these enormous intractable issues and then I realized you know a way to to serve the public and to make a contribution on these issues is to run for office yourself so I did I did do that and and put my own name on the sign this is the last one of these that I'll do does anybody know who the person on again I'm in the photo that doesn't count who is on the right-hand side of the photograph two for three that's that's still that's pretty good partial credit so the I just have this up there because I'm from Brookline and he's from Brookline this is former Governor Michael Dukakis who was the Democratic nominee for president in 1988 and if you like go for a walk along the Riverway near like the MFA and and and North Eastern and Simmons you will see Governor Dukakis as he normally does takes a walk along the Riverway every morning to pick up trash and throw it away so that's just a quick fact about who Michael Dukakis is and what kind of person he is but that led me to this current role today again this is I'll just give this one to you this is John Kerry and this is us at cop 26 last fall it looks like we're having a really important conversation about the future of global climate change we're actually discussing what time to have his press conference that night but I think in the future I'll just I'll pretend that this is where we solved the climate crisis and then that that's what the topic of conversation was but it's the same question that the Secretary Kerry asked and that's why he ended up coming back into government to be in this office it's the point of this office which is what can we do about the climate crisis that's a huge question right that's it's the same basic question but that's a tough question to answer right that feels like a bigger issue than any one person or one office or really even one country can solve so this is the the place where we could go through and spend some time talking about climate science I'm happy to talk about some of that despite the fact that I'm not a scientist and no less about how the mechanics of climate science works than a lot of other people in my office do but I think the fact is that we all know we all know that the climate crisis is real we all know it's happening we all know it's it's devastating places of the Arctic and the Antarctic where it was a hundred degrees above normal a hundred degrees above normal in the Antarctic two weeks ago it's causing devastating floods causing wildfires and all of it's hurting the people least prepared for it and most vulnerable to begin with as usual but I think it's interesting that here in the United States we still I feel like are one of the few places in the world that has this debate is climate change real especially because it's already happening right we all know that storms are stronger heatwaves are are hotter and worse and longer we all see that happening that sea level is rising it's happened within within people's lifetimes and to me it really does feel like an equivalent of asking is is the earth round and there are people of course who say no no no the earth is flat but I think that that question should be viewed similarly because it's just not a debate this is this is one of I think the most compelling charts because they're these presentations always involve them this goes back 800,000 years to show the carbon dioxide level which you can tell from ice core samples over the past 800 thousand years and that shows where we are now so it's real it's happening this is just another illustration of the point this is what it looks like when we say 97 out of 100 climate experts think that human beings are responsible for what's happening just a visual representation of the of the consensus so where are we here's the bad news it's happening it's devastating the impacts are being felt in every country in the world some more than others and they will continue we already lose something like 10 million human beings every single year because of extreme heat extreme cold and air pollution 10 million people every single year and that will get worse and we're not moving fast enough I think that's again that's not anybody's opinion that's not political that's not that's not even controversial it shouldn't be the fact is we're not moving fast enough to respond and everybody who looks at the science agrees but there's good news which is that it's not too late what we have to do is limit total warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius now this is I think part of the messaging challenge that we have here I have worked in communications for a number of years 1.5 degrees Celsius doesn't seem like that lot that that much at least to me I don't know about you but like one degree one and a half degrees of global temperature rise that doesn't seem enormous but it is this is the average global temperature and how much it can rise based on the baseline which is about a hundred years ago but the science says that if we limit total warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius we can actually secure a safer healthier planet we can actually still avoid the worst consequences of climate change not all of them because some of them are already happening and baked in but some of them the worst ones so the path to do that is to cut emissions by at least 45 percent probably more like half this decade and then we need to reach net zero we need to get to sort of pollution neutral zero emission net emission world by the middle of this century so here's where we are as you can see this is this is where we've been this is the level of emissions and this is where we need to go so to get to 1.5 to get to the safe limit that's what has to happen and here's basically where we are at the moment so again the path still exists it's not too late we're just not there yet and fortunately after cop 26 we're actually closer to this yellow line now and maybe even a little bit below it but the problem is of course that it's that's based on what are we gonna do what are we gonna do for the rest of the decade but we need of course to do even more and that's what the rest of this decade is gonna be about that's what I hope your simulation this weekend will show us how to do because that's the question is how are we gonna do it so this is just a quick illustration there are lots of maps that that show similar views of the problem this is why when we say you know this is a problem that one country in the world can't solve I mean this is emissions by country as you can see there are a few countries predominantly in Africa that are not contributing significantly to the problem unfortunately these are also the countries that are often most vulnerable to climate change and experiencing the worst impacts something like 48 countries in sub Saharan Africa alone only contribute 0.55% of total global emissions 48 countries 0.55% to give you a sense of the disparity and the injustice and then there's the rest of the world and everybody's part of the problem but not necessarily equally so there's a bunch of different ways to represent this I don't know if this is helpful I'm actually interested to know if this is helpful so let me just explain for a second and then I'll ask so this is all emissions a representation of all emissions in the world and then this is the top 10 countries so as you can see China the United States you obviously not a country but they function as a collective except when England decides not to be a part of it India Russia right so just to give you a sense of of where the emissions are currently coming from is this helpful yes okay good so this gives you a sense of sort of where the emissions are coming from and who needs and who's sort of whose actions would make the most difference this is another way of representing the same thing it's a little bit different but it often we talk about the top 20 emitters and this is this is a representation of that because we talk about the G 20 we talk that there's often a lot of these groups that involve the top 20 economies in the world and so this is just a representation of a few more of those countries which you'll see are part of the the conversation in a lot of these climate meetings but of course this could change right and this is part of the problem that I think we can talk more about today is that sometimes one of the arguments that you will hear and that probably will come up this weekend is that a lot of the one of the most common arguments that's made by some of these these other nations are two countries like the United States Germany and the rest of the EU is well look you caused this problem a hundred years ago you were burning all the coal you wanted before we knew about this problem so really this is on you we should get to develop and build our economies the same way that you did and you should have to fix a problem that you cost that's a very simplistic way of describing this dynamic the problem is if you look at the graph and you look at the science and you and you consider how many emissions are coming from how many countries and clearly that's not gonna work I mean if the United States if we magically took every single car in America and overnight just turned all of them into electric vehicles if we just shut down every single coal plant in America we literally took every single emission to zero that wouldn't get us there right this can only be solved through global action so that's the challenge so just quickly I won't go through much of this but I think that it's just important as context you've probably heard about cops you hear about cop 26 yes yes yes yes okay so cop the cop process the conference of the parties the process began this actually wasn't a cop but it began in 1992 in Rio and I think it's telling that this was the largest photograph that I could find online basically from this photograph to give you a sense this is also does anyone know who this is yes this is hw bush exactly so a republican president by the way a republican president of the United States went to this climate summit in Brazil in 1992 with John Kerry and a number of other Democrats and said climate change is real we need to do something about it they called it global warming but people talk about how the climate was in crisis in 1992 and over the years the process has gotten more robust this is the this is from Paris in 2015 this is the Paris agreement that some of you have probably heard of as well and I'm sure you'll be talking about the Paris agreement finally set out some sort of rules of the road and it was where all the countries who are part of the cop about 200 nations agreed like okay we'll all put out our plans for how we're going to cut the missions and agreed that two degrees had to be the limit that we needed to limit total warming of the planet to two degrees Celsius above the baseline unfortunately science says that's not enough it's got to be 1.5 two degrees is still terrible terrible impacts and we need to go further so that's what Glasgow was about and even in the progression of these photos I hope you get a sense of how much more formal this process has gotten and how much more time and attention has been spent on this which I think is a good thing so this is the this is last November this is a lot Sharma who was the UK president of that cop and then just to give you a sense of how strange these conferences are in some ways now so this is like a this is a giant warehouse and then every country has their own pavilion where they like they like hand out local products and and the South Africa pavilion have the best coffee of anybody at the event and so the lines were super long and everybody like advertises their climate solutions and their climate products and gives out like little napkins and buttons and people try to collect them it's very strange but in some ways you know a lot of people who are there their reflection is well at least it's getting a lot of attention like at least Leonardo DiCaprio is here and and like there's press here as a result because that you know people in the world are paying attention to this and making it a priority so this cop is where we agreed as a planet the 1.5 had to be a limit so that's one of the big things that this cop did accomplish it didn't solve the climate crisis nobody expected that it would but it was a real step forward talked about fossil fuel subsidies for the very first time that was mentioned in the statement from the cop it elicited a lot of pledges on a lot of stuff from methane to deforestation so I think just to sort of set the the tone for for how I think about this issue I really do think that the the question I've been asking all along about you know the question my parents have been asking me the question the president Obama had been asking what are you going to do about it to me I really do think that that is a we what are we going to do about this and I think that the hopeful message is there's still things we can do there are things that we can do we can avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis is not too late the fatalism on this issue in my opinion is not helpful when people say it's too late we're not gonna make enough progress because that's just not true and in many ways it lets us off the hook it's still on us it's our responsibility to do something about this while we can and then this is just a photo that I love that I close on just in this presentation so this is a picture that shows that the earth is not flat but but I I'm always I mean I'm sort of like a NASA nerd but I always love hearing astronauts reflect on their experience and about how when they're in space and they look down for the first time what there's a phenomenon that NASA prepares them for and talks through with them because people often get so overwhelmed that they like forget about the thing that they're up there doing and their mission because they get up there and they look down and they have this reflection about the fact that here's this entire infinite void of space and then here's this very thin atmosphere this tiny little layer that protects the entire planet where everyone has ever lived and there's no borders from space obviously there's just the planet there's just this one place where every single person and thing lives and I know by the way that that's powered by a solar panel advertisement for climate technology but I think it's a sense of like what we can do when we work together I mean this is you know one of my favorite statistics in all of human history is that the the first human beings to fly the human beings that prove that it was possible to to break the bounds of gravity and actually to fly just sort of falling forward for a couple hundred feet at Kitty Hawk the Wright brothers they didn't actually meet him but they could have one of them lived long enough to have met the first human being to walk on the moon that's pretty wild that's one human lifespan or two that overlapped and we went from like falling across some sand dunes in North Carolina to this and so I just think to me it's a reminder that if we want to solve this problem we can it's just a question of whether we're going to so I hope we can talk about that I hope we can talk about anything that's on your mind my question I guess is that even if we somehow come up with a a strategy moving forward in addressing the climate crisis how exactly will we be able to actually put through with that go go through with that plan to actually reach the position of being in the position of power to be able to execute what we envisioned to be our plans because because in many sense currently there are many plans in developing more renewable energy as well as more adaptation and mitigation efforts however due to many of the lobbying that occurs within our government as that it is just speaking for the United States these policies have been difficult to carry out even the Green New Deal was cut back a lot from the Biden administration so I guess my question would be even if we have this strategy moving forward how exactly are we going to execute it yeah how are we gonna execute how are we gonna actually get these things done and look I think the the most honest answer is we don't know I mean you're right that that we you know that going back to the to the the slide about the good news the good news is that we do know basically how to do this we have a blueprint we know what the steps are that we need to take and to your question you know are are we gonna do that are we actually gonna take those steps and I've actually you did mention a couple things and everybody is probably incredibly familiar with with these terms but I just do want to highlight adaptation is one of the things that we're starting to invest in so adaptation as you probably know means helping people adapt to to what the world is now which is 1.2 degrees warmer and continuing to help people adapt as it gets even even warmer than that the you know the the most recent IPCC report we just referenced the IPCC in the introduction most recent IPCC report did warn us that we can only adapt to so much you can adapt you can help people adapt in to a 1.5 degree warmer world president Biden has a plan called prepare that's gonna help half a billion people adapt to climate change but there's only so much adapting that we can do but anyway to answer your question look I think the answer to that has to be yes we know what the solutions are and the the answer to the question are we actually going to implement them it just has to be yes it it's unthinkable for us to not solve this problem particularly when we can solve it when it's solvable and so the question is if we don't currently have a political willpower in the United States and in other countries around the world how are we gonna get it and so I'd say we need to solve all of those issues and if necessary one at a time and maybe that means registering more people to vote maybe it means preventing people from being kicked off voter rolls maybe it means prioritizing this is a political issue maybe it means continuing to put the pressure on public officials here and around the world to do more and to be more aggressive it means letting companies know that this is a serious consequential decision when people are purchasing products and that if the the company isn't prioritizing this in the boardroom and in the products they make and sell you're not gonna buy them that you know we are seeing the good news is we're seeing an enormous amount of activity that's real I mean look I understand when people are skeptical about a lot of the companies that say that they're gonna do this that or the other but the good news is a lot of these companies there's from from what we can tell from what they're committing to they're very serious about this transition they recognize that this is unthinkable and you're not gonna want to own stock in a shipping company in a world where the the seas are unpredictable and there's constant storms and so Marisk which is one of the biggest shipping companies in the world they just committed to buy their next eight ships are gonna be zero carbon it's real those are real ships that are that they've ordered some of the which don't even exist right now but because of their order they will and so you know we just we have to do everything in our power to make sure that we find these solutions and then we actually implement them and some of the solutions are coming from new technology we have to be careful about that because we don't want to imply that there's gonna be some magical machine that's gonna suck all the carbon out of the air and solve the climate challenge for us that's not gonna happen I mean that's not gonna happen there's a tiny infinitesimally small chance that that could potentially happen someday but I don't think we want to bet the future of the planet on it and the good news again is that there are things that are within our power right now the IPCC the scientific body they were very clear about this the technology that we need to solve the climate crisis exists right now and we can do it so I think you know are we gonna get there that remains one of the biggest questions facing the planet but I do think that we we have overcome prior crises in the past we have the capacity to do it it's hard to find somebody thankfully at this point I mean they exist but it's hard to find somebody in my experience who doesn't think that this issue is dire and critical and important and so I think that that tells us we can do this I mean we just need to we need to find the willpower and so I guess that's that's what I would say about sure hello oh welcome welcome from Georgia yeah so I want to go back to what you said about there's still being people who think climate change is real and how it's still a discussion and how that even if the amount of people are small how it like hinders the movement towards climate change yeah I think most most of us can agree that topics like climate change and vaccines and COVID like shouldn't be but unfortunately they still are yeah and so my question would be how do you think we should depoliticize these types of topics and essentially convince people that it's not it shouldn't be something that no matter your political standing should be looked at the same yeah this is another one of the really important and really good and really difficult to answer questions and again if we knew that I think we'd be in in better shape and you know it feels a little trite to reference a Leonardo Caprio movie but I'll do it anyway but but right like they illustrated this this problem in in don't look up which is on Netflix they illustrated this challenge and yeah I think that there's a lot of relevance to something like COVID where you know there there is a certain percentage of the population that won't look up if there's a comet headed toward the planet that will say you know COVID isn't real the virus isn't happening don't need to wear masks etc. I don't need to you know this that and the other and we'll say it about the climate crisis I think what what often is effective in these conversations a is recognizing that that is not a majority viewpoint if you look at public opinion surveys in this country that is a minority viewpoint that climate change is not real or that the science isn't settled and so know that going into those conversations even if the person who's saying it is unfortunately an elected official know that that is a that that is a small and declining percentage of people who think that and then I think what I try to do is back up and say that this is not a disagreement and try not to have an argument where I'm on one side and they're on the other and say you know look unfortunately science doesn't care what side of this argument we're on the planet doesn't care what side of the argument you're on this is happening and it's happening in people's lifetimes and I think when you show them the evidence when you approach it as much as possible sort of from just a calm explanatory point of view you're not going to persuade everyone right there's some number of people who think the world is flat who think that we didn't land on the moon but we don't need to convince every single person to do that and I think the more that you can just share like the actual experience of living on a planet the concerns that you have and say well here's why I'm concerned about the climate crisis and and explain that you know this is living this is within our lifetime this is our generation this is our experience on this planet is going to be really bad if we don't do more about this and I also try to emphasize to people even if you don't believe that this is happening do you really think that we should rely on a country like Russia for oil and gas or do you think that we should use the power of the Sun and the wind to power our homes like even if you don't believe that that this is real and that this is a problem do you want the air that your children to breathe and the water that they drink to be clean or not and you know this is part of the you know what I think is so frustrating of course about this issue is that there's really no argument against any of this I mean it's such a good investment it's so obvious it's so clearly the thing that we need to be doing that it's hard to find rational explanation for why somebody wouldn't be on board with it even if they didn't believe any of the science and so I think that it's just about having more of those conversations and mobilizing and empowering more of the people who can speak to that experience that they are living right now you know the people along the Gulf Coast that are being impacted within the United States those that storytelling I think is really powerful especially in oil and gas communities I thought you know there's a lot of things that we can do there's a lot of things that we can do there's a lot of stories we can mobilize and whatever works is what we need to do because again we can't lose this is a this is it's not a question of whether we're gonna win the fight it's just gonna be how we're gonna win it and one person in time one election of time one issue of time one bill of time if need be thank you yeah thank you so much for speaking today yeah yeah I was wondering you mentioned in your presentation a little bit about this simplistic argument about telling lesser development nations not to industrialize as much I was wondering if you talk more about the hypocrisy of that and what you would say to a less developed nation who might have to admit more carbon emissions but how can you tell them not to do so right so this again this is a huge challenge and and and I don't at all mean to be flippant about countries that are developing and are concerned that they're not gonna be allowed to develop at the expense of you know of jobs and livelihoods and quality of life for for people in their country look I mean I I think the first thing is that we all just have to agree as a baseline that no one is gonna want to live on a planet that is two degrees two point five degrees or more warmer nobody's nobody wins everybody loses on that planet and particularly in these in these developing nations as usual it you know the impacts are gonna be awful and devastating for for people in their countries as well and so so we start with that acknowledgement and then we say and look the the developed countries can help and they can help mobilize financing they can help come in and and figure out where it does make sense to invest in developing the renewable energy infrastructure in a country right where there are companies that can invest and build a solar plant or offshore wind or whatever the case may be and are doing that increasingly and then I think some of it as well is showing the the cost trends I mean the price of solar and wind is dramatically declining you're not gonna want to own a coal plant in 20 or 30 years you're not gonna want to and this is why this is off the record and you're not gonna you're not gonna want to own a natural gas facility in 20 or 30 or 40 years you're just not going to want to because those are not going to be cost-effective nobody's gonna want to invest in those nobody's gonna want to pay for that energy when solar and wind and hydro and everything else is just so so much radically cheaper and more effective and you don't have to rely on other countries to do it and so I think what we most of all say is this is not it's a false choice to think that you have to either develop or combat the climate crisis the answer is that you can do both you can do both and you know it's up to everybody in the world to make sure that every country can do both but this is not a choice that should be or needs to be put to any country anywhere and the question is just what do they need and how can we help and that's part of what the cop meetings are about and that's part of what we that's part of what we need to do just in the interest of time can we start asking questions to at a time and then oh man this is a challenge yeah I accept it your memory firstly thank you so much for your speech of course creamer from Columbia prep and my question touches on responsibility and on incentive I've noticed a disappointing trend of the individual thinking oh I don't have nearly as much impact on the environment as say for instance an oil company who's known about climate change for 30 years not done anything so firstly how can we incentivize the individual the consumer versus the corporation or the government and secondly how do we deal with the incentive of short-term or current profit versus long-term much smarter investments in more eco-friendly or climate change combating energy yeah not even energy just largely yeah okay wait we're taking two okay so you go ahead I'll find a way of answering both my question sort of very different area how dare you sorry go ahead I'm Henry Kramer I'm also from Columbia prep my question is about sort of what role should fossil fuel companies play and what role do they play in the climate change in the fight against climate change I noticed that one of the like citations citations you had was from BP and I certainly think they can be helpful in aggregating data certainly wouldn't they have short-term profit motives as my sister said in mind yeah yeah so this is okay so the answer to well I think the answer in some ways can be linked so the question is like what what are you gonna do it what what are we gonna do about it collectively so the the answer the first question is everybody bears responsibility right because like the thing that every single person on this planet shares is that we live on this planet and all of us have to breathe the same air drink the water live on the planet that's healthy and so we all have an equal stake and so you know I think that that it is insidious and it is real on this issue and on lots of issues that people feel cynical and feel like one person can't make a difference and it's not worth trying and certainly there are people who through their own privilege and many other reasons have more of an ability to make an impact and those people need to be held accountable I need to be told this is what we need to do and here's how we need to do it but I think it's also I hope empowering to know that calls to your representatives at every single level of government really matter I mean really matter not so much if you're from Massachusetts calling Kentucky or calling a representative from another state but your city counselors your state representatives your state senators they listen when you call and you say we expect action on this they listen and I think movements like the Sunrise Foundation and others have done a very good job of just demonstrating that people listen when there's committed concentrated efforts and so I guess what I would say to people is like everything matters we're not at a position where you can say like well in the you know these oil and gas companies there's so much more to blame so like it doesn't we don't need to recycle we don't need to whatever the problem is unfortunately everything does matter even little incremental progress matters enormous amount right now when the stakes are literally the future of the planet and then the question about like how are these companies going to be a part of the solution they have to be the you know that you're right that some of the data that we have has has certainly not been taken at face value necessarily in every case right the question will be like well does that fit with the modeling from other scientists and this that and the other but the fact is you know like the every well I don't want to say every but many cars in the parking lot tonight they're still based on gasoline and the power for this building I hope in part comes from renewable sources on this campus but if you look at the energy mix even in state like Massachusetts fortunately a lot of that is still fossil fuel produced and so there is going to be a transition and I think what the Biden administration has said very clearly to the fossil fuel companies is like they need to be a part of the solution and part of that means simple things like plugging methane leaks that's a huge deal plugging methane leaks this decade and reducing methane emissions alone could prevent point two point three degrees of warming and so they absolutely can be a part of the transition and I think part of the argument when you're talking to a company that's profit based is yeah short-term thinking is a really bad idea and part of this I do think is about convincing the boards again you will not be able to sell energy in a world that's in chaos because of climate issues it's not going to be profitable it's not going to be a good investment and your shareholders will hold you accountable if your company all of a sudden isn't profitable because the planet is collapsing and your shipping lanes are collapsing and you can't extract any of this energy anymore but I think ultimately what we need to do is move to a totally clean economy right that's what science says and again that this is part of the the illustration that we have to do it's not what I'm saying it's not what President Biden is saying it's not really just an opinion it's just a fact we have to move to a clean economy and so the question is how are we going to do that and I think the answer is everybody needs to be a part of it and that'll take a number of different forms but it's a necessity to get to the climate goals in time we're gonna need everybody to be working on this I'm Chelsea I'm from Columbia Prep as well. How many people are not from Columbia Prep? Okay okay good there's a few of you here good wow. My question is on behalf of my delegation the African Union shout out best delegation I in your presentation you talked about how a lot of African nations they're being affected almost like the worst even though they contribute the least your emissions and Leah kind of brought this up earlier but how are they supposed to act now if they kind of they do need to develop for the well-being of their citizens for the well-being of their economy but they also do want to help and they feel that like they're not given the as much of as much of a voice as they should be given so like how just like what can they do yeah so oh wait we're taking two right okay and so your question hello my name is Ray Hanuman and I'm also from Columbia Prep no shocker to you yes so my question is you know like within the span of an hour we're all supposed to be negotiators so should our focus primarily be on persuading members of government or members that technically have like power in like creating action or should our focus be on educating like the people of a nation and ensuring that the public opinion of a nation is favorable to action towards climate change good questions good questions okay let's try to answer them in some ways together look I think you have to recognize the dynamics in every country and every country in the world of course is is facing a unique set of circumstances has it has its own populations own concerns and it's and is to some degree of course self-interested right I mean that that that's just the nature of the world but that's also an opportunity and so I think a lot of African nations for instance at COP and elsewhere are really leading the way so Rwanda and Senegal have really demonstrated a lot of the adaptation practices that we are adopting globally because they're figuring out how to help small farmers plant better seeds that are going to be resilient to rising temperatures and less predictable rainfall patterns or they're building roadways accounting for the fact that like a roadway that right now is not built in a river may be in a floodplain in 20 25 30 years and so I think that's part of what they're doing and then also reforming partnerships recognition of this reality which is that as you go forward this is why developed countries have this collective goal of mobilizing a hundred billion dollars annually in funding to help countries invest in adaptation and mitigation strategies and this is part of president Biden's plan which will help people adapt as well so you know you're absolutely right to identify that this is a challenge but I do think that there's a lot that can be done and also I think organizing collective voice kind of in the same way that we were talking about the Sunrise Foundation or movement and others the there's a group called the V 20 which is the vulnerable 20 the most vulnerable 20 countries in the world to the climate crisis they're actually meeting next week I think and when they release a statement together that's actually a little bit more powerful and influential than it would be if just one were advocating on their own so much in the same way that I think somebody like the an organization like the EU has really collectively mobilized Europe's voice even if they have internal disagreements I think that collective action can be powerful even on the sort of national global level and so I think that that's how in part I would answer the question about how you approach these negotiations start from a position of what's our goal and then break it down into region and country if you have time and figure out like what is our goal I mean look if you're in Europe while Europe is on board for the most part for the most part with with this issue Europe European nations their public is on board with the issue they're moving quickly they're slashing emissions quickly they're investing in renewables of course not as fast as we all need to be but so that's a different conversation and the goal there is different and so I think what I would consider is sort of what we what we try to do it at at COP and what we try to do generally is divide up that strategy and figure out like okay who's gonna be our lead with this region who's gonna be our lead with South America who's gonna be our lead with East Asia who's gonna be our lead on this and then maybe you want to have another issue right I mean methane is one of those fact-ass fast-acting climate pollutants we can get a lot of impact on warming right now if we turn off methane emissions so maybe you want to think about having somebody who like that's just their thing and they want to go around and figure out how to convince some group of nations to act on that issue but anyway so I think that's that's part of the answer it's just like everybody has to be a part of the solution everybody can be a part of the solution and the question is how are we gonna make that possible and we all have to make that decision in a way that's strategic but there's lots of right answers I guess is the good news to that question yeah I'm market bowls I'm from Dovershire born my question final I love Dovershire well done well done my questions about the international versus national debate that we have about climate change so in the United States we talk a lot about both fatalism and denialism which are both like not helpful those play out in the same way on the international stage as they do on our national stage great question no I think it's fair to say not entirely but no that denialism is mostly in an American I don't want to totally say this out loud again this is off the record but it's predominantly an American phenomenon there are of course leaders around the world who say that the climate crisis and the real there are course people around the world that you could find who will say that they're not worried about it and it's overblown but as a as a dynamic in our politics I think that this is something that we face in the United States more than in most other nations and fatalism and cynicism is common to every country and community in the world unfortunately and again not just on this issue but on so many issues and it's one of the things that president Obama would talk about all the time is that the you know the cynicism in many ways was the most dangerous enemy he felt like because more than in the same way that disinformation disinformation isn't just you probably know this isn't just about putting fake stories out it's making you feel like you can't trust anything or anyone because you don't know what's true there's it's just an overwhelming amount of different points of view that make you throw your hands up and feel like this I can't get engaged this is too complicated and so I feel like that's it's the same thing with cynicism the the problem is is it leads to apathy and it makes you feel like those are nothing I can do there's nothing one person can do and that's a challenge in a very real way but I think that's why we need to do a better job of advertising what we are doing being excited about the solutions and about the possibilities they offer and about the better world that we can get that all of us will benefit from and overcoming that that dynamic generally I mean I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we face just as people as human beings in the world is to like wake up and feel hopeful and optimistic about you know about lots of things but I think it's really worth it it's it it's the only way that you get people to keep doing these these incredible jobs that I've gotten to see a little bit of in my career it's how you get people to invest in programs like this and be here and be a part of this work and the although the last thing I'll just say is that the like I think nobody has a worse record of accuracy than the cynics then the cynics cynics are always wrong always always they're always wrong they that there were the people who were like we'll never land on the moon it's a pipe dream we'll never you know Biden's never gonna win the election it's a pipe dreams never gonna happen don't waste your time like they're just like always wrong and individually they might have some examples where they're right and like the Yankees win the World Series one year and it's awful but over the long term they're just always wrong and I think President Obama the last thing I'll say about this is like one of his favorite sayings which people can disagree with but spoke to me was that better is good and better really is good like you know people all the time would say like your health care plan wasn't perfect we should have had a single payer health care system well some people would say like you're crazy communist and you want to kill my grandmother but reasonable people people that I consider reasonable would say like oh well we should have had a single payer health care system and he would say you're right but better is good and tell 26 million Americans to have health insurance that it's not worth it and this wasn't this wasn't a good effort like you know the people that aren't dying because of a treatable disease like they're better is good for them and so I think that's one of the things that I've had to come to terms with in politics is like you're not gonna get everything you want right away but reflect on the progress because it's meaningful and it matters to people and it's the only way that we get things done sorry I messed that up that was supposed to be two questions okay very positive very supportive I just wanted to ask would you mind giving us a summary of in layman's terms of what was said at the cop Glasgow conference about energy government subsidies about subsidies yeah yeah so this was one of the big things that happened at cop was that governments finally for the first time ever said that we needed to address the fact that governments around the world subsidize oil gas and coal so in a nutshell today I mean I was gonna say to the extent that I remember this but unfortunately I do remember all of this even though like some of this was happening at three in the morning what we would have liked to say is we need to phase out those subsidies because right like every single word of this text is something that like literally in rooms like this one there's you know it's like model I mean it feels a little silly to say it's like model UN because it's basically the UN but it's you know there's a representative from every country in the world and they're all arguing about every single word especially of these kinds of sentences and so there was public reporting about this I'm not divulging anything super secret but there were a couple countries that objected to phase out subsidies not the United States one of them is a country in East Asia one of them is a country in South Asia they are very big they're the most populous countries on the planet and they said no we are developing phasing out all of this energy is not possible in the short term and they and they suggested a change it became a subject of a lot of debate at the cop but I think as as as Secretary Kerry has said many many times since then and back to the point of better as good the language that was agreed to was they need to phase down these subsidies and I think Secretary Kerry's point was well you have to phase down something to phase it out I mean that's you know that's the trajectory once you're phasing it down well where does where does that head once you're on this path where's that going it's so yes so anyway so the this was a big deal that we'd never been able to get 200 nations in the world to to agree that collectively we needed to do this so that's a sort of short nutshell version of what ended up coming out of the statement and then there was a whole bunch of other actions that were taken and commitments and pledges and whatever about how to do that and what would replace it but that's a longer answer yeah I can hear you thank you for your time I'm from Boston Latin school my name is Joshua and and you've talked a lot about cop 26 and well I think there were definitely a lot of things that happened there I've also heard a lot from youth activists and minority activists as well that's not a lot or not a lot that was significant was done not enough was done I believe Greta Thunberg gave a speech in Milan about this the blah blah blah what would you say that like how do you think we can convince young people to believe in world leaders of today that they will actually do something to help with the climate crisis yeah look it's a good question and look I don't the first thing that I want to say is I don't want to try to convince anyone of anything I think that especially on this issue talk can be cheap and we need to see action that's just again it's not political it's not that's not controversial it's just a fact we need to see action on this we need to make progress on this as a planet and so what I would say is I know that people are frustrated and I'm frustrated too but the fact remains that we live in the world in which we live and the way that things get done is often frustratingly slow and we need to find ways of picking up the urgency and everybody has a role to play in that and it goes back to the to the to the point that was made before which is cynicism is not helpful and it's not useful we can and have to win this battle I think you know the the actions that were committed to a cop some of them were really were really important and meaningful we of course do need to see more across the board obviously in climate justice obviously in environmental justice obviously in the urgency of action globally every single country in the world needs to move faster and so I think what I would say is is keep up I mean the you know adults need to act like adults the people in these rooms who have responsibility need to act like they do and act like the future of the planet is at stake and you know they're held accountable by us by by people and the good news is that like at least from my perspective the people that I was in the room with the people in the United States delegation the people that we were working closely with and you know the Canadian delegation and the European delegation the African delegations like nobody is there because they just want to pay lip service to this issue everybody has committed their life and career to this work because they care about it and because they recognize the stakes and so you know we just need to find a way of of solving one of the biggest challenges in the history of human civilization together in a very short amount of time but again that sounds big when put that way but it's achievable we this is something that we can do so look I think it's great that that people are in power are empowered and that especially young people have taken a leadership role in mobilizing public activism on this issue I think that's great and I hope it continues and I wanted to ask about equity of voice because as we've already discussed the African Union only contributes about 4% total carbon dioxide emissions and as you mentioned at place at conferences like COP26 they are presenting plans and strategies to fix a lot of these issues and they're presenting plans that will actually work and that will actually be effective and yet we're not seeing them carried through and I know that one of my other classmates already asked about the political aspect of it all but I was wondering in your line of work how much of the conversation was actually dedicated to making sure that these countries plans and strategies were actually being implemented and if it wasn't which is totally fair whose job is it to make sure there's equity of voice in these conversations yeah before you get to that answer can we have one or two other students I understand that all countries have to contribute to try resolving climate change what do you suggest to developing countries you don't really have the resources to spare to contribute to the matter I think like it's kind of obvious that there are like a few countries with a lot of privilege that are like dominating the climate movement and I think usually those countries aren't like the most impacted by what's actually going on and I I'm just wondering like to what extent do you think the climate movement would be different if the countries like without really a voice were prioritized okay so this these are actually related questions okay and and it makes sense I mean this is a question that I think all of us need to ask and is at the forefront of a lot of these conversations is you know who's who's who's being given a microphone who's who's allowed to speak in these in these conferences and at these cops who who's empowered who has agency which of course is a problem in a lot of issues it domestically and also internationally well to answer the question about like whether whether a platform is being given to those countries I think that's been part of the process and I certainly don't wouldn't want to speak for those nations I will say that the you know after the four-year gap when the United States had pulled out of the Paris Agreement and had pulled out of every international convening President Biden has been very intentional about having the United States engage with and give a platform to other nations so like there's a the at-cop one of the sessions is with the the island vulnerable nations and so the United States is they welcome other countries to join and so the United States and the European Union joined so that those countries could be given a platform heard from they chair the meetings they lead the discussions they decide what the topics are and the more cop members are a part of any one group the like it that's sort of how it works is like if you have more people in your group you're you know you get you get more of the time because everybody is competing with each other to talk about the issues that are important in their region and it's absolutely true that the the outrageous consequences of the climate crisis are falling on these climate vulnerable nations many of whom are not committed emitting as many emissions even though as we say every country in the world even if the impacts aren't evenly distributed every country in the world will suffer is suffering from the changing climate and so you know I think that the this is something obviously that that needs to happen more there needs to be more attention paid to the to the plight of nations that are already experiencing climate disasters on a daily basis the that's why actually I am not going but secretary Kerry is leaving tomorrow to go to an ocean conference which is they've we've decided to hold I say we as the collectives that are part of this ocean conference hold in Palau which is a small nation in the in island nation in the Pacific this is the first time this conference is ever being held in a small island nation in the Pacific and reporters and and and journalists and and ministers from around the world are all coming to this island to talk about what's happening there and you know in terms of what would happen if all nations agreed like what the mechanism would be to get all nations to agree to the solutions that are being proposed by these other nations this is the this is the challenge of all of this work in my opinion is that it's very hard to act unilaterally even if you know what the right answer is it's very hard to get the whole world to act and to get other nations to act unless you convince them that it's in their own self-interest to do so and you would hope that the compelling evidence from science and that the collective mobilization of most of the world helps do that and we're trying to put in place incentives that help expand the urgency and make people recognize that time is running short and that everyone will suffer and developed countries have committed to do more than they're currently doing to help developing nations adapt to what's happening already and also to grow in ways that are clean and that are green and that are sustainable and and keep the planet and their nation healthy but we need to do more and I think everybody would agree with that and this is one of the big questions that we face is will we I mean here we are I'll try to say what I could say about this it does feel like an issue where we need to lead by example and in the United States we have the capacity to do that and I certainly hope that Congress moves quickly to do so but we all have a role to play