 Thank you very much for joining us today for the special briefing, Ambition and Opportunity in America's New Climate Commitments. We have a really dynamic discussion lined up for you today. I'm Dan Berset, Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. EESI 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. Whether for policymakers or the public, we do our best to provide informative, objective, nonpartisan coverage of climate change topics in written materials and on social media. Everything we do, briefings, fact sheets, issue briefs, articles, newsletters, and now, even podcasts, is always available for free online. The best way to keep track of our work and access our resources is to visit us online at www.esi.org and sign up for our climate change solutions, our bi-weekly newsletter, and also please follow us on Twitter at EESI online. Two short weeks ago today, when we announced this briefing, we were just about to celebrate the 51st Earth Day. The Leader's Summit on Climate was in full swing, and the Biden-Harris administration had just released an updated greenhouse gas reduction goal, the U.S. nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement. At EESI, we welcomed the news and acknowledged that much hard work was yet to come. That is not an original thought by any means, but that sentiment, the, okay, so here is our goal, now how do we meet it, is the driver behind our session today. The Biden-Harris administration will use the policy levers available to make gains. We also need Congress to act if we expect to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030. And the sooner Congress is able to act, the better. We need every minute of the next 10 years to be successful. We need to make the most of the time available to us now to help affected workers, their families, and their communities navigate an equitable transition to a clean energy or clean decarbonized economy. Our panelists today will help us think through the, okay, so now what part of that accompanies the new NDC? What do policymakers need to know to be successful? How do we meet our goals in a way that creates economic opportunities and strengthens the standing of the United States on the international stage? What actors and stakeholders need to come together to make all of this happen? These are big questions, and thankfully we have two of the best experts out there to help us find answers. Three last quick things before we start the presentation portion of the session and then kick off the discussion. First, today we will primarily discuss the emission reductions, the mitigation steps required by the NDC. But that is, of course, only half of the equation. On the Monday before the Leaders Summit on Climate, in partnership with the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, the British Embassy, and the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, we hosted a briefing to specifically discuss climate adaptation. Climate adaptation and resilience is a big focus of our work at EESI. And it is often missing or given lesser status in climate policy discussions. If you missed that session, please visit us online at www.esi.org and check out the archived webcast and presentation materials. I also hope you'll take a moment to download and read our report, The Resilient Future for Coastal Communities, which collects findings from our 16-part Coastal Resilience Briefing Series that concluded last June. With the policy-making audience in mind, it features some specific case studies from U.S. coastal regions and recommendations sorted by policy lever and by topic. And second, we will have a little more time than usual for discussion today. And that means we can take your comments and questions, even though we're once again remote. Please feel free to send your thoughts to us by email at EESI or to EESI at EESI.org. We can follow us online using Twitter at EESI online. Sorry, I said that in an awkward way. Follow us on Twitter at EESI online. We will do our best to incorporate your input into the conversation. And lastly, before we begin, I need to share an update to our agenda today. Unfortunately, Ann Kelly, who's Vice President for Government Relations at Ceres, will be unable to join us. We have a rain check, so we hope to feature her soon in future policymaker education. But we will miss her today, and I would like to offer a quick but very sincere thanks for her help as we organized our briefing today. And now I get to introduce the first of our two panelists. Tracy Bach serves as the co-focal point of research in independent non-governmental organizations, Ringo, to the UNFCCC Secretariat. She is a law professor who is taught and published on climate change, international environmental law, and human rights, and healthcare and environmental health law. She has degrees from Yale University and the University of Minnesota. Tracy, it is great to see you today. I'm really looking forward to your presentation. I'll turn it over to you. Thanks, Dan. And thanks for the lovely introduction. And Dan and Anna, thanks for inviting me to participate in today's panel. The US rejoining the Paris Agreement in January, and then convening the Leaders Summit on Climate just about three weeks ago, as you noted, are key first steps in US re-engagement internationally and domestically on climate change. As President Biden has emphasized multiple times, given that some 85% of emissions come from outside US borders, domestic action on climate change goes hand-in-hand with international action and leadership. So starting with the next slide, let's take a look at what the US and all countries are doing in the international landscape. So first of all, since 1992, about 190-plus countries have been working multilaterally under the UNFCCC, which is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And under the Convention, the Framework Convention, these parties have set out to work on and agree on strategies, as you said earlier, Dan, to mitigate or reduce greenhouse gases, specifically six of them led off by CO2 and methane, also to adapt to climate change impacts, even though that wasn't as apparent back in the 1990s when they were negotiating the UNFCCC. As we know, climate change impacts are definitely in play now. And so that's a main part of the international work together. And the third is what are commonly called means of implementation. So notably finance, sharing technology, and building capacity in developing countries. Because as we know, developing countries, historically, are certainly not as responsible for the buildup of CO2 as a result of industrialization. And they are disproportionately impact by climate change events like sea level rise and extreme weather. So when we look at these treaties together to move forward to understanding the US and DC now, I'm noted here that the Kyoto Protocol was a second of the three climate change treaties now under the UNFCCC. And it imposed quantified emission reduction targets on developed countries. Now under the Paris Agreement, which was adopted in 2015, went into effect in 2016, and functionally really is coming into a full effect in 2020, this is where we see all countries taking on mitigation, as well as adaptation responsibilities under this pledge called a nationally determined contribution, or NDC, with the goal of keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5C, meaning a rise from the pre-industrial temperature So let's break down NDCs so that we can understand the US NDC going to the next slide. So NDCs on the next slide, that'd be great. Thanks. So NDCs form the backbone of the Paris Agreement's ambition cycle, as they call it. And if you look on the right-hand side of the slide, or at least my right-hand side of the slide, you'll see, great, thanks, that's good, you'll see the cycle laid out. We're basically, under the Paris Agreement, countries are required, required, it's a treaty obligation, to submit these NDCs once every five years. The second obligation they have is after submitting them to report on the progress on the pledges that they made in their nationally determined contribution. And then third, to keep pushing countries to increase their ambition, there is a global stock take that takes place every five years, whereas the progress reports that individual countries publicly disclose via the Paris Agreement and the website at the UNFCCC, it's their individual progress on their individual NDCs. The global stock take, in contrast, looks at the collective progress of all countries, every five years, and it looks at the progress relative to achieving the 1.5 C goal. So keeping the number of gigatons of GHGs that have been emitted within the barriers, within the tonnage that correlates to a less than or up to 1.5 degree C increase in temperature. So that's the framework for an NDC, that's the ambition cycle with hosting the NDC, doing the stock take. What's in an NDC, as we mentioned earlier, tends to be, or was it really originally, more mitigation focused, and that's what we're gonna see in the U.S. NDC in just a moment. There's a lot of content flexibility, that's what I wanna be clear, and so the box in the middle of this slide gives you the sense of both in the blue, mitigation pledges that can be made, but also in the green adaptation and then in the yellow finance. I'll get to those specifically in the U.S. context, but that's the general backdrop. So the next slide shows over time this ambition cycle, and I think helps to take the busyness of what's in an NDC and put it into context of its function within Paris Agreement of keeping 190 some countries on track to a mid-century goal, which was articulated in Article 4 of Paris Agreement, of net zero emissions and climate resilience by mid-century, so the 2050 end dot there. What the NDCs and the global stock take do, and that cycle of revising post-stock take to have a more ambitious NDC, that's all, those are the near-term strategies. So from 2005 to 2025, which was the U.S. original first NDC, now 2005 to 2030, their near-term strategies to get individual countries to work collectively to achieve 2050 net zero goal. So with that ambition cycle in mind, knowing the backdrop of all three treaties, and you've now just done a 15-week course in just a few minutes, two minutes and some, let's turn to the U.S. NDC and unpack it a little bit. So on the next slide, you'll see a comparison slide that is set out at a great resource, I recommend, the Climate Action Tracker, or CAT. And what you'll see is a comparison of the United States NDC. So this isn't the U.S.'s NDC, let me be clear. You can find that also at the UNFCCC website, you can get it at the White House website as well. And it lays out in about 26 pages, I think, as compared to the five pages of the original 2016 U.S. NDC. Very detailed agenda for achieving what we see here expressed as the bottom line mitigation goal. So what you see here is on under 2020, as Dan mentioned earlier, the new U.S. NDC is expressed as a 50 to 52% reduction from a 2005 baseline of those six greenhouse gases that are established through national inventories that the U.S. and other UNFCCC parties have been keeping for years. So on that baseline, the U.S. has committed to, by 2030, reducing from that number 50 to 52% giving a range. And you'll see the tonnage marked right beneath it. One thing to keep in mind is that as you look at the rest that's on this comparison, is that the U.S. has not, in its NDC, not made an express statement about its net zero emissions target. It says it's going to get there and that's a goal, but it does get, it gets a plus sign for having improved over the first NDC from 2016, but it still could be expressed with more clarity and showing a little more exactly how we're going to get there. But the other thing I want to point out to you is notice just above that comment about the different levels or baselines that can be used. So what the cat folks have done here have taken President Biden's commitment to a 50 to 52% reduction from 2005 and translated it for us to what that would be if it had been based on a 1990 level, so the 35 to 43%. And then also if it had been expressed based on a 2010 baseline. And cat has done that because one of the challenges of looking at NDCs and really of NDCs overall is that they're nationally determined. And so countries actually have the choice to build it up bottom up from their existing laws versus something that comes top down from an international agreement. So one of the challenges if you're trying to compare between countries is the US doing enough, for example. Partly you would compare that to other countries, not just to its capacity of what it could do. And that's where you've got to baseline it. And so cat has done that for us here. And of course, when we get back to the slide I just showed before on the cycle, the ambition cycle that you go from an NDC that then is reviewed in a global stock take collectively with all the others. And from that, then you realize what the emissions gap is globally. So then all countries revise their NDCs to be more ambitious. With that in mind in that cycle you need to be able to translate between the baselines. So if we go to the next slide, you'll see that I think this is the rhodium group has put together, has done that translation for us. So let's just zone in in the middle there on the US that has a little star on it. And you'll see that there in the green is the expression of the US's mitigation NDC on the 2005 baseline. So then you can compare that to what the UK's looks like at 63% and the EU's at 51%. But the EU expressed theirs in terms of 1990 because they had been working on this since the Kyoto Protocol. And the baselines in the Kyoto Protocol is 1990. So there then if you took the blue lines and compare you'd see that in fact the US is less ambitious than the EU's and the UK's and for that matter Norway's. So in other words, baselines matter. It's a little bit of math, but fortunately there's plenty of folks who are doing it for us. You know, Dan mentioned earlier that we tend to get very mitigation focused very quickly with these NDCs and I just did that. So I wanna stop for a moment and offer a couple other points of the US NDC that are worth looking at. One on the adaptation as Dan mentioned, it's important the US has done several things. One in doubling its commitment to climate finance overall by 2024 and that doubling is based on what the last term, the Obama term was committing to climate finance. The Biden administration made the point of saying that within that doubling, the US would triple its adaptation finance. So earmarking more of it for adaptation specifically. On adaptation activities, there's several things that are going on. One, there's a support for environmental justice and climate resilience. There's a $1 million grants and cooperative agreements that are being funded by EPA that are looking at underserved and vulnerable communities in Canada, Mexico and the US and it's to help them prepare for climate related impact. So adapt to climate changes. US has also announced a program partnering with island states that are who are, which are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise on climate and resilience as well as working on black carbon initiatives by investing in clean cook stoves and remedies for health impacts in the Arctic due to black carbon. So those are just some examples but the adaptation finance internationally will be well received by the international community at COP26 and it's fascinating for me to see how the Biden administration in its NDC doesn't address adaptation but in the announcement of the NDC has created a package of adaptation activities that go with it. The last thing I wanted to point out, again, not fully announced in the NDC partly from the press release, partly from the narrative at the beginning of the US NDC. A key thing to keep track of is the number of bilateral initiatives or small multilateral but bilateral initiatives for the most part that are contained here so that US actions will activate more ambition from countries that it's working in. So let me give an example. There's the US India climate and clean energy agenda. This is a 2030 partnership and the idea is to support the US India collaboration which originated back before Paris, the Paris Agreement in 2015 when the Biden administration, sorry, when the Obama administration pursued bilateral activities with India, China and Brazil before the Paris Agreement that that is gonna be focusing on the achievement of India's electrification initiative. So they have a goal of 450 gigawatts. So renewable energy and electrification by 2030. There's another activity that I think is pretty interesting. Again, described with the NDC is the net zero producers forum and you can imagine that there are a number of countries like the US that produce fossil fuel based energy like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Norway and they're forming this net zero producers forum and it's basically a way of getting their energy ministries to work together to focus on essentially pragmatic strategies like methane abatement, for example, or carbon capture and storage activities, various kinds of clean energy that they can increase in their mix and diversifying like in the Gulf countries, their GDP. So that's a very practical kinds of activities. I'll stop there. There are many more of them. I cataloged at least a dozen or so. So let's go back though to the next slide where after we've looked at the US NDC, we could go to the next slide please. Thanks and we've compared it. One of the points that stands out, that last slide was just the developed countries but what this one does, it's another one prepared by the Rodeum group that shows you the trajectories of based on these new NDCs not just the US's but comparing the trajectory of the decrease getting to that 2050 goal of the US and Europe at the top and you see that the EU is well ahead of the US mostly I would say because of its participation, active participation in the Kyoto protocol and the changes that it's already made. But if you look at developing countries like India and China, you can see that they are still anticipated to continue growing their emissions as their emission output is essentially electricity. Other energy production is linked to their need to develop for economic development. And that brings me back to a core principle of the UNFCCC that you see an environmental justice movement both rich domestically and internationally about common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. The baseline idea is that India and China have differentiated responsibilities than up for climate change than the United States and the EU countries because it was not involved in the mid to late 19th century industrial revolution through World War II and after that produced the now locked in warming that's already in the atmosphere or that's a result of the number of greenhouse gases already residing over that 100 year period for example with CO2 in the atmosphere. So their argument is that because they are not as historically responsible for it and they are poorer countries even though China of course has developed and has gotten very close has gone above the EU in terms of for capita greenhouse gas emissions that it still argues that it will has to take longer in order to develop the capacities to begin the process of decreasing their emissions. So I put this here because you always are gonna be comparing countries that's what we did in the last slide to look at whether they're ambitious enough. This slide captures this tension that you see in the international negotiations between developed and developing country about at what point in time does their sovereign right to develop economically we now say sustainably how does that affect their ability to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. So let's look at the next slide and actually the last three as I see that have taken my fair slice of time here. I wanna wrap up with these last three sides in assessing starting to assess with you where the renewed US engagement in the Paris Agreement is taking us. So one this slide shows the emissions gap that you can see on the left that our friends at CAT calculated that looks at not only the original NDCs back in the 2015 range but then has added in these revised ones. So not just the US but also we know there have been new ones announced by the EU countries, the UK, China has made some announcements even though it hasn't submitted a revised NDC, Japan as well as some other countries. And what we see are two things. One that the newly revised NDCs have led to a narrowing of the emissions gap that between what countries say they will do to reduce emissions and the stated goal that they're working toward which is to keep cumulative greenhouse gases to not creating more than a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature. So glass half full, this renewed momentum that the US is a part of and hopefully is leading as much as it can by example, it has led to now a decrease in that gap of some 12 to 14%. So that's the good news. And this is measured to 2030. So there's still time to keep working on it through up to 2050 net zero go. But obviously there still is a gap. And so if we move to the next slide, Kat has also laid out for us countries that have more to do. First of all, all countries have more to do that's the ambition cycle. And in theory, as countries reach their targets or get close to reaching, for example, their 2030 targets, it will be that much easier because of the adjustments made policy infrastructure adjustments made within each country. It will be that much easier to then offer new and newly more ambitious mitigation targets. But you can see that if you look at the bottom three, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and the Russian Federation have at best repeated their earlier NDCs from 2015 or weakened it. And then at the bottom, you'll see that there are some countries, including India where new announcements have not been made. So what does that do? Let's go to the next slide. It gives us opportunities. And this is where I'll end on a timeline. What I've done here on the timeline is help you see what's coming up now. On the top, you'll see the activities, the meetings that are taking place under the Paris Agreement. And so the SBs are the subsidiary body meetings that are taking place virtually in the month of June. The pre-cop that will be hosted by Italy, which is one of the partners for COP26 at the end of, well, early October. And then COP26, which is the British presidency, says is still online to be held in person in Glasgow in early November. That process is one in which you're gonna see continued engagement between countries, new NDCs, for example, and countries supporting countries making publicly announcing their new NDCs through a variety of activities. Below the timeline there, so outside of the formal international climate change engagement process, the negotiation process, I wanted to highlight the G7 and G20 summits that are coming up in this timeframe because the G7, as many of you probably know, is being led by the UK this year. They have the presidency and the G20 is being led by Italy. And on both of their agendas, climate change is right up there with the pandemic recovery. So there's a lot of potential in those meetings. Both these are the leader summits that are going on at the same timeframe from now until COP26. But also there are ministerial, finance ministry meetings, ministerial meetings being held in between as well as environmental ministerial meetings, again, of the G7 and G20. And what happens is there's interplay between the two. So on this, at this multilateral level, those two processes are coming together, in part because of where we are. And that's where I wanted to end with the question that Dan and Anna asked me to think about what folks who wanna know what Congress should be doing at this point. And I know that when I last presented with EESI was a briefing before COP25. And I hadn't prepped for a question which was someone saying, so what do you want us to do between now and when we go to Madrid? And I thought about it and I actually said kind of cavalierly, it would be great if you could come to Madrid to COP25 and show the rest of the world that one branch of the government is still very engaged in climate change. And I was blown away when there was the two day visit by Speaker Pelosi and her large team. So I'd love to see everyone in all three branches, but in particular in Congress, one working on the pandemic recovery legislation because that and the infrastructure plan have decided green components and they will help the US meet or walk the talk of the individual pieces and policies of what it needs to meet its NDC targets. It's the only way that we'll get the per capita emissions of the US which is at 17.6 tons down to the world average which is between five and six tons. And our target of 50 to 52% below 2005 is good, but most experts believe that we should be shooting for 57 to 63% below 2005. So we would need to be doing more on domestic energy and transportation and buildings in order to get there. And then finally, while the finance was good, it's a promising pledge. We're still some 2 billion in arrears to the process. And I know we'll talk about that more in the question and answer session, but that is an area that I'd love to see us working on. I'll stop there and give Rachel the floor. I'm looking forward to hearing from them. Thanks Tracy, that was a great presentation. You had a lot of great slides just as a quick reminder to folks in our audience. If you missed any of what Tracy had to say, if you wanna go back and look at the slides more closely, everything is available online, www.mesi.org. Also wanted to give a quick plug to the Climate Action Tracker. Tracy's slides used a lot of their numbers. If you wanna learn more about them, you can visit them online at climateactiontracker.org. That's a really excellent resource and I encourage everyone to check them out and make use of their information. We will move to our second panelist now. I get to the pleasure of introducing Rachel Cletus. Rachel is the policy director with the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She leads the program's efforts in designing effective and equitable policies to address climate change, advocating for their implementation. She's an expert in policies to promote clean energy and drive deep cuts and heat trapping emissions from the power sector, including carbon pricing, complementary sector-based policies. She also does research on the risks and costs of climate impacts and she's an expert on policies to promote climate resilience. Rachel, welcome to the panel. I'll turn it over to you. Thank you so much for having me and Tracy, that was most of all. Thank you for setting me up with a lot of the very important details on the international diplomatic process. Next slide, please. I'd like to start by just grounding us a little bit in what the Paris Agreement means in terms of people's daily lives. So I know some of this can feel very abstract, very dry and let's just remember at the core of this, this is about climate change and climate impacts that are already unfolding around the world and are having a tremendous effect on people both here in the US and in many places around the world and our global commitment to limit some of the most harmful impacts of climate change by making deep cuts and heat trapping emissions. That's the essence of the Paris Agreement. Next slide, please. So where we are today is it's pretty clear that the latest science has very sobering messages for us. Up here on the slide, you can see on the right that that's a snapshot of the $22 billion past extreme weather and climate related impacts that the US experienced last year. Among them were record breaking, wildfire season and a hurricane season. We've also around the country experienced flooding, heat waves, et cetera. And that's just the United States. Around the world last year was also a year where they were terrifying cyclones and typhoons. There were heat waves, wildfires. Again, the US is on one hand extremely exposed to many different types of climate impacts but they're unfolding all around the world. And the Paris Agreement was one of the most important pieces that the Paris Agreement captured for us. 190 plus countries signing on to an agreement with a science informed goal. And that goal was to try to limit the global average temperature increase to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to aim for 1.5 degrees C. This is a science informed goal that for the first time made it into an international climate agreement. And subsequently the country has also asked the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC to prepare a report to point out what would be the climate impacts and risks around 1.5 C and above. And also what were pathways to limit temperature increases to that level. And that's what gave rise to the 2018 IPCC 1.5 C report where for the first time the IPCC said that the world needs to get to net zero emissions by mid-century and even more that the world needs to approximately cut emissions in half by 2030. So about 45% below 2010 levels by 2030. And that even at 1.5 C, there was some very grave impacts that would happen around the world. But as we get above that, every fraction of a degree about that brings with it profoundly increasing risks. And those are risks to human health, to livelihoods, to ecosystems, and really profound changes to our planet that future generations will have to contend with. Here in the US, we also had an authoritative scientific report, a federal government report, the fourth national climate assessment that came out in close succession to that IPCC report. And it pointed out that right here in the US, climate change is already unfolding. We have seen significant shifts in temperature, in precipitation, other kinds of climate impacts sea level rise, and that if we fail to curtail emissions sharply, along with the global community, those impacts will worsen significantly. Just this week, today in fact, the EPA has updated its Climate Indicators website. You've probably seen that in the news. It is really, on one hand, straightforward sharing of data and information on the EPA's website. But what a breath of fresh air, because we had just emerged from the dark ages under the previous administration where the EPA's website, many of these sites were taken down, climate was stripped out of a lot of work that they were able to do. And this is a new era. And that is reason for hope and optimism. As well, last week, we heard from NOAA, they updated what they call that 30 year new normals. Every 30 years, they adjust sort of the baseline, temperature, precipitation, et cetera, across the United States. And what's really sobering when you look at that 30 year average that's just been updated is that the new normal is extremely abnormal. We in the US are seeing systematically around the country an increase in the baseline average temperatures. We've seen parts of the country get much wetter, parts of the country get much drier. So both drought and extreme precipitation increases. And so this is all the context in which the Paris Agreement is going to hopefully help us solve this global challenge. Next slide, please. So just earlier this year, the United Nations put out, it does an estimate every now and then to see how our global efforts to curtail emissions stacking up to the Paris Agreement goals. And this graphic essentially points out how off track we are as a global community. From just those 2030 goals that I just mentioned, forget the mid-century goals. We right now, with the global emissions having a small dip last year because of the terrible COVID crisis and the economic crisis that it unleashed, we are still, just except for that brief dip, we're still relentlessly seeing emissions go up. We're seeing atmospheric cumulative emissions continue to go up and we are seeing its impact. So the UN Secretary General called us a red alert for the planet. Next slide, please. This was the context in which the Biden administration, when it came into power and it first said very quickly, right off the bat, they were going to center a very robust, just and equitable climate agenda in their first 100 days. And that, of course, they would rejoin the Paris Agreement, the papers were signed the first day itself. The US, by the way, uniquely and shamefully, the only country that exited the Paris Agreement last year under the previous administration, but now back. And recognizing that just coming back in is not enough. The US has a lot of ground to make up. We need to come in with renewed commitment to show the world that we're serious, we're going to be a good partner. And so many, many of us, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, were very keen that the Biden administration put forth a robust, ambitious, nationally determined contribution. This climate, and again, very early by the Biden administration, the International Leaders Climate Summit that coincided with Earth Day last month. And the NDC was to be announced around the summit. So in the lead up to the summit through March and April, we made it very clear to the administration that we expected to see a bold NDC because the science is pretty clear that we have to act. UCS led a letter that over 1,500 scientists and experts signed on to. We featured in that letter some key actions that the US could take to build a robust emission reduction commitment. Next slide, please. And we weren't the only ones. This was a multi-sector engagement for the administration. A number of major businesses also sent a letter to the administration. And I think these numbers are even outdated. I think that number of businesses is now over 100. If Anne Kelly was here from Ceres, she would have the numbers at her fingertips. But that was a letter that Ceres helped to lead. And the basic thing is we said the US needs to cut its emissions by at least 50%. Below 2005 levels by 2030. Next slide. In the course of developing the NDC, there was obviously a lot of consultation with many, many folks. Gina McGarty, the National Climate Advisors Office was certainly in robust engagement with the private sector and many, many others on what would be possible. At the same time, Special Envoy John Kerry was engaged in an intense global diplomacy to also encourage other countries to come to the climate summit with a greater ambition and to help raise global ambition overall. Now, of course, the centerpiece of the summit was the US NDC announcement, which as Tracy mentioned, was the 50 to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030. It is definitely the level, the scale that we were hoping to hear. As we know, though, based on the science, based on global equity, there is certainly more that the US can and should be doing. But in 2021, on Earth Day, it was really, really important to hear that at least 50 and very good to hear the 50 to 52%. Next slide, please. There were several additional outcomes at that summit as well. We heard going into the summit, the US had made a commitment around international climate finance. They had talked about contributing $1.2 billion to the Green Climate Fund. It is not a sufficient contribution. The US is in arrears, as Tracy mentioned, under the Obama administration, we had pledged $3 billion to the GCF. We only delivered one, and then the subsequent $2 billion was reneged on by the previous administration. And meanwhile, the benchmark now is that many countries are doubling their initial GCF pledge. So the US really does need to do more to catch up on that front. But it was a very, what was very clear from the Earth Day summit was that this administration is taking a whole of government approach to how it addresses climate. And it understands deeply that the international climate pieces are very much connected to what we need to see domestically to help deliver on people's daily life needs right now, jobs, cleaner air and water, justice, et cetera. And so we had an array of officials on the administration, everybody from our Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, who was there talking about the security aspects of climate change, to Department of Interior Secretary Deb Holland, talking about natural climate solutions. Secretary Granholm was there from the Department of Energy talking about clean energy and innovation and the huge potential there. So it was a really encouraging show that there is an understanding that climate change touches everything and we need to have a whole government approach. One of the most impressive speeches at that summit was from a young climate after the chair of the CEDA who spoke to the need for political leaders to stop just panicking young people, but actually acting in accordance with what's necessary to deal with the climate challenge. Climate vulnerable countries were also represented. There were about 40 nations invited, Bangladesh and Marshall Islands, for example, were there speaking to the existential threats that their countries face from climate change despite having contributed very little to the problem. They find themselves on the forefront facing the brunt of impacts unfolding right now. Next slide, please. So what does this mean going forward? Well, we've had a very good start at the other day summit and there is more to do. The US does need to make sure that it is committing robustly to climate finance. That has Tracy pointed out that there is more detail around a national adaptation strategy as well because we have unfortunately locked in some pretty significant climate impacts. And then the US as with other richer nations really needs to open the space for negotiations around loss and damage. Loss and damage is a very specific term used in the Paris Agreement to describe the fact that in addition to adaptation to future climate impacts, the reality is that climate impacts are already unfolding now and many nations have already experienced significant losses already because of climate impacts that are a direct result of emissions from richer nations and that there needs to be an acknowledgement of that responsibility in particular. Unfortunately, the US and many other rich nations have refused to acknowledge that responsibility and although it's in the Paris Agreement gets very little attention in the negotiations despite lots of pleas and urging from climate vulnerable countries. Next slide, please. So just a quick snapshot about where we are in terms of cumulative carbon emissions. So often people compare annual emissions and there is a narrative around responsibility that emerges from that. Just to be clear, the United States is the largest emitter of cumulative emissions since the Industrial Revolution. By far, if you look at this chart, you'll see the red circle there is the United States and the next one, the green one, it's China. And that means that we do have a unique responsibility here for grappling with this challenge and contributing to the solutions. Next slide, please. As Tracy pointed out, there's a lot to do. We still have an emissions gap, so to speak, between where we need to get in 2030 and where nations pledges are taking us so far. So we have to make sure that globally we're raising ambition and the US putting forth an ambitious NDC is a huge, very important catalyst for that ambition. We will see more ambition unlocked later this year because the US took that step. It was very important to see it and it really helps build our credibility and our ability to get other countries to do more and do better. Unfortunately, the reality is that global emissions are continuing to rise. But that very hard to see graph at the bottom is the IEA's recent data, which shows that they projected in 2021 were to see the biggest jump in global sea that we've seen since last economic downturn in 2009, 2010. So that's a sign that, unfortunately, we're not seeing a green economic recovery, a climate friendly economic recovery. We're seeing a reversal to business as usual fossil fuel dependency, which is a real warning sign as we go forward. Next slide, please. And just to be clear, deep emission starts here in the US are feasible. We've now had numerous analyses that were put out early this year. I think there are just a few that I've listed on this slide that show that indeed the US can reach at least 50% below 2005 by 2030. And the pathway to that next slide, please, is there are some really common themes that emerge. And many of them are the straightforward solutions that people have been talking about for at least a decade, if not more. We need to ramp up efficiency in renewable electricity. We need to be looking at economy-wide transportation, buildings, industry, everywhere. We need to be electrifying as much of energy and use as possible and making sure that that electricity is coming from renewable sources of energy. We've got to make sure that we're safeguarding and enhancing our land sinks, which help absorb carbon dioxide, but unfortunately are under threat because of development, because of climate change itself, which is contributing to drought and wildfires that release the carbon that's stored. We've got to cut all gases. CO2, yes, but other heat trapping gases as well, like methane and HFCs. We've got to invest in R&D. And I just want to point out the other theme that is implicit, but I just want to say explicitly here that it's very important. We're talking about deep systems change. This is not incremental change on the edges. This is really about systemic change, but it's a change that will deliver multiple benefits if we do it right. Next slide, please. This is of course about our climate goals and climate ambition, but it is deeply connected to creating a more just and equitable society because our dependence on fossil fuels is contributing not just to heat trapping gases. It is also driving air, water, soil pollution that is leaving a terrible and structurally racist legacy in black and brown communities in this country. We know that there's a disparate and outsize exposure to pollution in black and brown communities and in low income communities. Meanwhile, we know that many co-workers and co-dependent communities are being left behind as our nation is transitioning away from coal. We absolutely have to invest in a fair transition so that these communities too can benefit from a clean energy transition. Ultimately, how we get to these emission reduction goals is really, really important. This is not simply about a technology. This is really about a fair and just transformation in our society that will also help us address climate change. Next slide, please. So just to bring this back to the domestic space, everything that we're talking about on the international agenda, that US emissions reduction goal, that nationally determined contribution, well, the mirror image of it is what happens on the domestic front to deliver on that goal. And delivering on that goal domestically is all about making sure that people right here in the United States are benefiting from climate action. To do that, we have to make sure that these jobs, these clean energy jobs actually materialize in the US. We have to invest in the supply chains, the manufacturing bases, the training for workers. We have to make sure that this economic opportunity is available to everyone in rural communities, all around the country. So the American Jobs Plan that the Biden administration announced really has that broad vision that is about making sure that economic benefits flow to all communities. We talked about investing in broadband. We're talking about investing in community colleges and HPCUs, historically black colleges and universities. What do those investments deliver? They deliver a pathway to these jobs and this economic opportunity. Also, the public health benefits of this clean energy transition, we have to make sure that they help address the longstanding environmental justice concerns that have been raised by many communities around the country. The Justice 40 initiative to invest at least 40% of federal investments in communities that have been left marginalized previously. That's a very important way to make sure that this is not just about infrastructure but also infrastructure that directly benefits people, especially those people who have been left behind in the past. We do need to have a climate risk disclosure to make sure that our market incentives are also aligning with these climate goals. And just today there was a letter sent out by 82 organizations around this bill around climate risk disclosure that is in Congress right now, which will help make sure that more companies are acting in line with what we need in terms of a low carbon climate resilient future. We need to hold fossil fuel companies accountable. They have played a very disingenuous role in styming and slowing down climate progress and climate policy in this country and around the world. It's time for that to stop. We cannot let the narrow profit motives of subset of companies hold all of our futures in hostage. There are many, many forward looking companies that understand that climate change is a deep systemic and economic risk to our country. That's why they signed the letter to President Biden asking for that deep emissions cut, that bold and esteem. There are many forward looking businesses that understand that there's a huge opportunity here in developing technologies and selling them around the world in energy technologies that are the future. And that's what we need to lean into. Next slide please. So what's next on the road to COP26? So it's crazy pointed out we have this climate summit is coming early in the year and there are many opportunities throughout this year in bilateral and multilateral fora for the US to engage with other countries to urge them to raise their ambition and to create this high ambition coalition by the time we get to Glasgow in November. There's a real need to ramp up climate finance in every country in the world. We are in this profound moment where we are grappling with a terrible COVID-19 global pandemic, a public health crisis that has also unleashed an economic crisis. Anything we do about our climate ambition has to be connected to these near term imperatives. When we're talking about investing in infrastructure, that's about creating jobs right now, helping jumpstart an economic recovery but making sure that those investments are clean energy and climate resilience can also align them with our longer term climate goals. And then the stark reality is that climate impacts are continuing to worsen and accelerate around the world. So even in this year, we are seeing last year we saw a compound crisis with the COVID pandemic and a hurricane season and a wildfire season. Sadly, we don't get to pick one crisis at a time but what we do get to pick are the solutions and the choice in front of us is to implement solutions that help address multiple crises at the same time. And that's why justice and equity has to be embedded, has to be in the core of our solutions because every one of these crises, whether it's climate change, whether it's the COVID crisis, the economic crisis, the crisis of structural racism in our country, all of them are falling disproportionately on black and brown people and low income people. So our solutions have to embed equity and justice in them. The US is a microcosm of the world. This is true around the world too. We get stuck in images of global geopolitics that have us in a some zero sum world. Well, the people who are actually being hurt are the poorest people around the world. Last year, millions of people fell back into poverty because of the COVID pandemic. Climate change is an added layer of risk that's making that even worse, threatening food security, displacing many, many people around the world. So the imperative now is to have solutions that work on these multiple levels. Next slide, please. Yeah, so I guess I'll leave it there, just saying that this moment we're in is a moment where we face tremendous risk, but we also have a real moment of clarity here, a moment where we recognize that given the urgency of all these crises, inaction is just unacceptable and we have to act in a bold way. So many of you on here are in different spaces where that action can be pushed forward, whether it's in Congress, the administration, or out in the country where people are building an amazing, diverse and broad climate movement. So looking forward to questions and thank you for hearing me out. Thank you, Rachel. Before I toss it over to my colleague, Anna, I'm again, to lead our discussion, we did have a couple of questions come in from the audience and I'm gonna combine two questions that came in that I think, Rachel, you might be well equipped to answer. It's a two-parter. Where did the 50 to 52% number come from and who specifically was involved in developing that number? What was the process that led to deciding on 50 to 52%? That's a good question for the administration. I unfortunately can't speak for how the administration in particular came up with that number. What I can say is that they certainly were aware of all the analytics that were out there showing that it was feasible and possible and so that certainly must have contributed to their thinking. I think it was also really important that they were hearing this from different constituencies, from businesses, from scientists, from activists and just to be clear, as crazy pointed out, there were many people saying that a larger number was necessary. There are numbers out there as high as 70% saying that that is what's aligned with the science and global equity. So I'm sorry I can't speak to the inside mechanisms of how the administration came up with it but this was sort of the context in which that commitment came. Great, thank you. That's great. Tracy, do you have any insight to offer before I introduce Anna? Yeah, I would just add while I'm not within the federal government, I did watch the first NDC be put together and she's absolutely right that there are a number of think tanks basically. Obviously the rhodium group has been doing a fair amount of analysis. There are university-based groups. Fair shares had a report which was a bunch of folks who did different numbers basically based on pathways based upon existing policies and the potential US policies and transportation, electricity in particular to move the dial. What I would like to just put on the table and I read the NDC carefully because I couldn't, I didn't hear it articulated. There's a lot about working with subnational actors meeting states and counties where as we know during different administrations since the 1990s, there's been more activity on climate change at the state level and then on adaptation in particular at the county level. And at least for the first NDC, I finally got someone to say that the federal government had not totted up all of that when factoring that into their NDC commitment. So it truly is a all of government all of federal. And as far as what I'm hearing right now, there still is this open question and from reading the NDC, the way it's framed, it talks about working with state and local governments. So I'm thinking again that that's going, and I think one, the think tank as a climate change center at University of Maryland has pointed out as well that it's not factored into the current NDC. So provides a cushion to go further. And again, there's lots of activities at the state level as we all know. Great. Well, thank you for that. We actually, our last briefing of 2020 was specifically around the status of climate action, subnational climate plans in the United States. And we had Nate Hultman from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and Carla Fresh from RMI. Excuse me. They led a presentation that we had a discussion. So we covered that towards the end of last year as a way to kick off for what we hope to be a good 2021. Well, thank you, Tracy, for your presentation. Thank you, Rachel, for your presentation. We're gonna pivot now to the discussion. I am going to, and there's still opportunities to ask questions, the way to do it. Follow us on Twitter at ESI online. Send us an email, ESI at ESI.org. But now I'm gonna turn it over to my colleague, Anna McGinn. Anna is a policy manager here at ESI. We work very closely together on the policy team. And she was instrumental in planning today's briefing. So she is going to kick off our discussion and start with some questions. So Anna, thanks for joining us today. I'll turn it over to you. Great, thanks, Dan. And thanks, Tracy and Rachel, so much for your really comprehensive presentations. This is personally one of my favorite topics to dig into. So it's always fun to hear from people like you to presenting on this. So for our discussion, we're gonna dig into both the NDC and some of the particulars that you all laid out for us. And that also kind of the international governance framework around the NDC and some of these other topics you touch on like climate finance, adaptation, how do those all fold in? And why is it so important for Congress to be thinking about all of these different pieces to ultimately have an effective implementation of the NDC moving forward? So our first question for you all this afternoon is we've heard clearly from you that perhaps the NDC as it's laid out right now isn't quite enough. More ambition is going to be needed to hit the goals set under the Paris Agreement. But I think the question still remains, are we even on track to be able to reach the goal that has been set out in the NDC? So I'm curious to hear from you all, any more reflections on is the goal as set right now enough and are we on track or what policy changes are going to be needed, especially at the federal level but also from other actors from the private sector from NGOs to make sure that we are at least at minimum on track to reach the goals as set out in the NDC. Rachel, maybe we can start with you and then we'll jump to Tracy. Yeah, so that NDC goal is a 2030 goal and the important thing to keep in mind there is we're in 2021 now. This is about more than any one administration or Congress. And I prefer to see this as a glass half full moment where we have a good robust NDC commitment and now we need to build the policies to deliver on it. And guess what, those policies are things that will deliver benefits right here in the US. The reason to do them is because they're in our self-interest to deliver on. And we are seeing the building blocks starting to emerge. So the big infrastructure plan that has broad bipartisan buy-in although there are details that still need to be worked out I think is our most important near-term opportunity here to start laying the foundation. That foundation, the infrastructure foundation that we laid making sure that it's clean energy and climate resilient and it's delivering benefits overall can really unlock more and more as we go forward. I'll give an example from the power sector. We do have to get to 100% clean power by 2035. But the best way to get there requires building transmission, creating models of community ownership, distributed generation microgrids. If we start to lay those foundations now we have seen tremendous cost declines in these technologies in the last 10 years. We will continue to see innovation and cost declines. So lay the foundation and move is the moment we're in right now. And I would encourage people to recognize that we have the solutions at our fingertips. We have had them for a long time. That is not the challenge. The challenge has always been political will, getting the policies and action in Congress. So let's keep that in mind. And the other thing we need to keep in mind is that sometimes we get stuck in a frame of mind where we think that the politics are just a given and what are we going to do? Let's remember that the thing here is that we can't negotiate the climate change, the impacts of climate change. The science is the piece here that we need to be guided by. Politics are a human construct. And we as human beings need to understand the risks that are piling up here. And then we have the solutions. So let's add. Anna, I would jump in with a couple of points because I agree with everything Rachel said, but I had two or three points. One is yes, we are on track because we are already on track and have them for the 2009 goal, the one that was made back at Copenhagen, met that. We're in the low 20s or so on track to achieving the 2025 goal, the first NDC goal. And that was based on both policies and initiatives during the Obama administration most recently, but also what was built on at the state level. I mean, when you have the fifth or so largest economy sitting out on the Pacific Ocean here in the US and it passed the Global Warming Solutions Act back in the 1990s, started doing a lot of that work that then has the knock-on effect across the country, also provides models kind of like where the ACA came from on the health care front, right, out of the Massachusetts health care system, trying those novel ideas out at the state level. It provides the opportunity for study and scaling up. Renewable portfolio standards, for example. States all over the country have experience with them and that's the kind of policies that you would keep scaling up. I do agree with Rachel. The problem is, as we go at this level, there are entrenched forces that we're going to resist that. But I guess the last point I'd have is when you look at the 2020 election and Congress as it's composed now, I was just reading in the Times recently about who came out to vote, right, looking at it demographically. And in particular, if you look at the percentage of young voters, which they defined up to 40, I was surprised for young. Not first time, hopefully, that that's the demographic that all polling says focuses on climate change because this is the generation that's living with some of the impacts. So I think politically we have, I think this is a ripe moment, basically. And you have the business sector that increasingly over the last 10 years has been feeling the impacts. So when you have Munich Ray and Swiss Ray promoting more mitigation because of how much is being paid out in insurance on the other side, or more money invested in adaptation, they've seen the numbers. They know it works. And then you have as Rachel mentioned, climate risk disclosure projects have been going on voluntarily. But increasingly companies are being held either by their own shareholders or by increasingly state laws and maybe federal law at some point. And we know that Janet Yellen and her team are working on this piece of it to make those voluntary disclosures regulatory because they understand that climate poses risks to investors as well. So I just think it's coming from all angles. So I'm optimistic as Rachel is. Excellent. Thank you so much for those comments. And our next question kind of digs into some more of the specifics of the NBC. So Tracy, as you brought up, the UNFCCC looks at six different greenhouse gases, even though our conversations often center on carbon emissions. So I'm wondering if you could provide a little more detail on how other greenhouse gas emissions like methane, HFCs are addressed in the new US NBC. And why it's important for us to be thinking about those as well. And Rachel, maybe you could add to that and also comment on federal level work that's ongoing and is also needed to be thinking about these other greenhouse gases as we look to increase our climate ambition. So maybe Tracy, we'll start with you. Thanks, Anna. Yeah, and I'll keep this brief so that Rachel can come in with maybe more of the details on it. But I was just re-looking at the US NBC today. And what's interesting is, as I mentioned earlier, went from a very meager five pages in the first NBC to a blossom to 26 page NBC. But in it, most of that was the detailed tabular format, what's called the CTS, the commentabular format that's required under the UNFCCC rules, basically. So one, to answer your question, yes, CO2 gets all the attention. And there's good reasons for it. But methane has gotten plenty of attention as well. So one thing to keep in mind is the way it's accounted for in the NDCs is usually in carbon dioxide equivalents. So those other gases are captured. But they are just like I was saying, the baselines you need to translate across when you're comparing country NDCs, this gases they compare across by global warming equivalents. So that's in the NDC. Second, I don't recall actually, I mean, we're talking a lot these days about the methane rules. And the executive action to roll back, the rollback, I guess, to reinstate the Obama era methane rules. I can't remember. Maybe, Rachel, you can pick that up. I can't remember if that's mentioned explicitly in the NDC. But it is certainly talked about in the framing of the NDC, the press release from the White House. So there's relatively low hanging fruit there. Again, this is for annual emissions, not the excellent point that Rachel made with her graphic about historical emissions, the ones that are up there that are going to keep driving the warming. Hopefully that answers your question. I can let Rachel pick up from there. Yeah, so the US NDC is put in terms of net greenhouse gas emissions, so that's 52% number. And the greenhouse gases are meant to be all inclusive. In this particular context, one piece of analysis that was released ahead of the NDC announcement from EDF was around the contribution from methane reductions. And they showed that you could get up to 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 in terms of methane emissions, very cost-effectively. And it's sort of interesting because a lot of the industry agrees with that, that this endless venting and flaring of methane is just wasting a resource, and it's actually very cost-effective to plug these leaks. It will create jobs to actually upgrade our pipelines. Many of us live in cities where we know that this is the case. It's all the way to the delivery at home that we're seeing a very leaky system throughout. And there's some real opportunities all the way from the wellhead to delivery to plug those. HFCs have been negotiated on a separate track, the Tegali Amendment, which is an amendment to the Montreal Protocol for ozone-depleting substances. And that was a very successful international agreement, the ozone protocol, and the Tegali Amendment too, which is in that curtailing, sharpie curtailing HFCs. Again, it is an agreement that's supported by US businesses because many US businesses have developed substitutes for HFCs and want to sell them around the world. Again, just a very contrarian view of the previous administration that this didn't move forward. But interestingly, in December, a bill that was passed not only did Congress in a bipartisan fashion essentially institute the Tegali Amendment gold within that bill. It was not called the Tegali Amendment, but the HFC phase down is in that bill that passed in December, the omnibus bill. And that bill also included tax credits for renewables. Again, a lot of bipartisan support for renewable energy around the country. So we can get some things done, and there is bipartisan support. We just need to get out of this polarized frame of looking at why we're doing climate. We're not doing climate because somebody far away is telling us it's important. We're doing it because it's showing up in our backyard. And we have this moment where we have to act because our children, our grandchildren's future is at stake. Thanks, Rachel. Dan, I think it's up to you for the next question. Great. And thanks for mentioning the Energy Act, which passed at the end of last year, something we actually covered in a little bit of depth with our friends at the Business Council for Sustainable Energy back at March. We did a briefing around their fact book. And we had a few panelists that were specifically pointing to the Energy Act, HFCs and the tax credits or tax incentives, I should say, as evidence that something can be done even in a polarized environment. So I'm glad that you mentioned that. I'm also very happy and glad by how much we've already talked about adaptation. It's such an important topic and it's something so near and dear to ESI's heart. I'd like to spend just a moment maybe drilling down on adaptation and resilience a little bit more, thinking about what the opportunities are for advancing climate adaptation work and how they might mesh with adaptation and resilience proposals that are already under consideration at the federal level. There are a lot of bills being introduced in Congress dealing with coastal resilience, adaptation in insular areas, all sorts of things dealing with even some measures dealing with building codes. Maybe we'll start with Rachel and then we'll go to Tracy this time. What are some of the opportunities at hand on adaptation that we could be acting on in the near term to advance some of the adaptation goals described in the NDC and the documents released around the NDC? Yeah, so maybe I'll say two quick things. One is that although the NDC itself doesn't require delivering on an adaptation strategy, it's interesting because the UK did put forth a national adaptation strategy alongside its NDC. And we are really urging the US to do that as well because the reality is our nation does not still have a coherent cohesive national strategy. Instead, what we have is a piecemeal approach and we're dealing with these climate challenges very much as if they're one-off disasters. Oh, there's a flood, there's a hurricane, there's a wildfire. And what we're starting to see is a trend, a trend that is now clear to anyone that we're seeing year on year of terrible seasons of these disasters. So right now we have a tremendous drought that is building around the Southwest of the US. Much of California is in drought. This is setting up to be a terrible fire season. And in California, sadly, that fire season is becoming a year-round season at this point. So the imperative here to be thinking about adaptation because we've already locked in these impacts is so important. And in the current context, as we're talking about infrastructure investments, there's a lot of emphasis on clean energy. And let's just understand we also have to be building infrastructure that's built to last. We have to be thinking about where we're locating the kind of future that we're preparing for as we build this infrastructure. Are they in flood zones? The federal flood risk management standard was revoked by the previous administration that still needs to be officially reinstated so that our federal investments are built to a higher flood standard across the federal government. That's how we keep communities safe. That's how we make sure that taxpayer money is being well spent, frankly. And the thing that we have to recognize is that this is also deeply connected to equity because those who have the least or bearing the brunt of these impacts, sometimes your and your impacts, really are being left on their own to muddle through. And that is a shame for a country as rich as the United States to not have a more prepared strategy. And it has been particularly bad for indigenous communities, think native Alaskan communities, the Gulf South of the US communities, and the Gulf Coast have been repeatedly by these disasters. So yes, we need to do better. And there is a whole of government approach that now is saying that climate will be taken into account. It's been really inspiring to hear people like Secretary Deb Haaland who understand this issue so well. But we need to see more from the administration in terms of concrete actions. Tracy? Yeah, I would add just one thought at the about the subnational level. It's really interesting. There's been a fair amount of psychology study around how I think people, but I remember the results out of Yale being Americans in particular, respond better to adaptation and arguments for why that's important in climate change without saying or saying they believe in climate change versus mitigation and making those kinds of changes and passing those kinds of policies. And again, it's very visceral. It's up close. You can see the changes. You can feel the changes. But I think so actually there's been a fair amount of development at the county and state level with federal funding that has been passed through down to that level. And I think that's one thing I would like to make sure that there's only more of that and that we don't lose that in federalizing and coordinating more, if you will. Because it really has been the way, at least to date, to convince many voters that climate change is real. And it's through adaptation, the studies show, that they will eventually embrace the need for mitigation. So I'll leave it at that. Great, thanks. I mentioned this in my intro. We did a briefing on April 19th that we featured Andrew Jackson, who's with the British Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, specifically talking about the UK adaptation strategy. So if anyone would like to learn a little bit more about that, we have a briefing on it. Andrew was a great speaker. Anna, I think I'll turn it back over to you. Yeah, so I think we would be remiss to have a conversation with Tracy and Rachel if we didn't bring up this next topic or maybe these next two topics. So we're talking about adaptation, but at this point in time, even sometimes any adaptation steps are not enough. And at the international level, that's talked about as this conversation around loss and damage. So Tracy, maybe we can start with you. If you could share with our audience kind of what in essence should they know about loss and damage? What are the tough questions at hand? How does that conversation on loss and damage interface with climate finance conversations, which we're gonna get into a little bit more in a couple of minutes as well. And I think loss and damage is often thought about if people are thinking about it all, as some far off island state. I'm wondering and maybe especially with you, Rachel, if you could comment on how we might start thinking about loss and damage in a U.S. domestic context as well. Well, Anna, you've got it spot on when you talk about loss and damage. So internationally it's grown out of the adaptation arguments which came after the mitigation approach. There were years and years at the international negotiations where adaptation wasn't mentioned because it was feared that then countries would not mitigate as much if they were focusing on adaptation. So loss and damage is what you can't adapt to, right? It's an ending point. And we often think of the sea level rise example, for example, or the changing ice conditions and it changes the way of a native people's making their living, for example. Another step out is when that a landmass goes under water, think of Kiribati, you also lose sovereignty. What does that mean in terms of your cultural identity but then your sovereign and political identity? But we don't have to get that abstract because what we know because our Department of Defense has written about it in terms of national security that climate migration is one byproduct of loss and damage where people leave as they can no longer sustain themselves and their families in one place. So currently in the international negotiations, there is a mechanism that's called the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage. It has a set work plan. It originally focused quite a bit on insurance and reinsurance as a way of helping countries spread those risks and recover from especially extreme weather events tended to be the example. It is shifted to focusing more on climate migration. It is actively avoiding questions of what we might call reparations or liability because the developed countries in fact led by the US was very adamant in the creation of the Paris Agreement that that concept not be linked to the creation of an article in the Paris Agreement specifically on loss and damage. So it's focusing on other ways to do that. And on the finance piece, I know you want to talk about it in a couple of minutes, but I will tell you that one of the things that is very, very ripe on the loss and damage agenda for COP26 is a separate financing mechanism for loss and damage. So just as right now we say, for example, the Green Climate Fund, the GCF, is supposed to put 50% into mitigation and 50% of its funding into adaptation. There's talk about there being a separate stream for loss and damage, not necessarily at the GCF, but a pot of money for it. And right now that's a very active issue that development countries are keeping on the agenda as developed countries are working hard to get the market mechanism rules in place. So for the give and the take. Yeah, that's crazy. It has captured completely how the international negotiations address this issue. There are limits, physical and human limits to our ability to adapt to climate change. And we have already locked in some of those really extreme impacts in some places in the world. Sea level rise is one example. Extreme heat is another one. The latest science is showing that some vast places of countries near the equator are going to get so hot by mid-century. Just based on the emissions that, current emissions that we're talking about conditions that are really harmful to health, maybe even unlivable for some people. So vast numbers of people will have to move to stay safe. The thing about loss and damage is we might not want to acknowledge it, we might not want to talk about it, but it's happening. And real people are on the other side of it. The offset cliched and cliched climate changes we're talking about mitigation, adaptation and suffering. And that part, the suffering, is the responsibility of richer nations who are responsible for the vast amount of the climate emissions, the key trapping emissions. So I would ask us to think about our children and grandchildren and whether we want to condemn them to a focused world where their privilege depends on keeping other people out, or whether we want to create a human rights centered framework, a legal framework, an international framework that would actually recognize that this is coming, and we act in advance instead of again in emergency. Because what we will see is large numbers of people that will have to move. And in our current environment, we see the racist, xenophobic response that people get when they try to leave difficult situations for richer countries. We don't want to replicate that on a mass scale. And we have an opportunity now to act in advance so that that's not the case. So I would urge us not to be thinking from a posture of guilt or anything like that, but just this is the science. This is the reality, these are the facts. And there are things we can do now to make sure that we're not improving that level of suffering and misery in the future. Thanks, Rachel. And we are about to hit our time here if we haven't already. And I just want to mention that this conversation of international climate finance has really been woven throughout our conversation. And it really is an area that Congress can do something about. And so I just wanna leave us with maybe 20 seconds to each of you, if you want to say any final words on how are we gonna pay for all of this? That's a really easy question to get at in a few moments. But any words on the role of Congress and re-engagement with international climate finance? Rachel, we'll give you the first 20 seconds here. Well, what I would say very quickly is the most expensive thing is inaction. What we're talking about here is moving investments that will deliver benefits both in the near term as well as in the long term and help safeguard this future in a way that we can prosper in. This is, these are investments well worth making when you look at the alternative. And we can do it as a nation. We've done it to help confront the COVID crisis. We can do it to help confront this climate crisis too. Last word to you, Tracy. Enlightened self-interest, it's well spent and it's being spent already. So already we're looking at making more USAID dollars that bilateral aid climate specific. That's something very concrete action. It could increase the budget, but if they could and would, but you could also repurpose within it. Second, Biden's plan, not just in the NDC but the plan around it, already has several initiatives to green other pots of international aid that are going out with goals for X% and a climate czar, if you will, who will look through all the proposals to make them more green. And then third, I think that we can't forget that the $100 billion a year by 2020, the objective, the current climate finance goal of the Paris Agreement that was not scientifically based. It was forged out of a negotiation in Copenhagen in 2009. It seemed like a good round number. The real number is much higher, but the point is is about mobilizing that finance and private dollars, private investment is a part of that. And so what I'd ask Congress to think about and staffers to press is that the government dollars, which are always a smaller piece are catalyzing the private dollars. And as Rachel mentioned earlier, for example, in the cost of renewable energy technology, that has just dropped precipitously like 80% or so in like the last 10 to 15 years. And a piece of that is the money that went in was more expensive, right? But it brought it down. And so with a combination of well-placed but still enough public funding to take those upfront first dollar risks, you can get more, many folds more of private investment to follow. And that's the current model being explored at the international level. Thank you both so much for all of your comments today and over to Dan to wrap us up. Thank you, Anna. And thank you, Rachel and Tracy for an awesome Q&A and discussion and both very admirable efforts to discuss climate finance in 20 seconds each. That's probably a little unfair to save until the very, very end, but we'll just have to come back and do another briefing and with any luck the next time we do want it to be in person and we'll be with us and it'll just be a lot of fun and we can dig into that topic a little bit more. So thank you so much for joining us today. It was excellent. I learned so much from listening to you and I'm sure our audience did too. Members of our audience missed anything, of course. Everything is available online at www.esa.org and we also have written summaries up before too long as well. In addition to thanking Tracy and Rachel for their presentations today and Anne for her help in the lead-up to the event, also wanted to say a quick word of thanks to everyone on Team ESI. Obviously thanks to Anna for leading an excellent discussion. Also thanks to Dan O'Brien, Sidney O'Shaughnessy, Amber Todderhoff and Almere in the Court for everything they do behind the scenes to pull off our briefings. Special thanks to our last remaining spring interns Jocelyn and Kimmy working so hard to help us pull off these briefings. And today is the first briefing of our first summer intern to join us, Jackson. So thank you, Jackson, for joining us. I saw you lurking in some of the Google Docs. So thanks for all your help today with the briefing and welcome to ESI. I think you'll have a great summer with us. My colleague will put up a slide in just a moment. We always appreciate it. I didn't know we were a few minutes over, but we always appreciate if you have two minutes to take a survey to help us understand how the briefing went from your perspective. What did you think of the content? And you can put the slide up. What did you think of the content? Did you have any technical issues? Could you hear us okay? Was I fidgeting too much? Why was I confused at the beginning? You can ask questions too. Please, it really does help us a great deal if you have two minutes to help us by taking our survey. We read every response and we do our best to incorporate your feedback. So I hope that you will take advantage of that opportunity. We will go ahead and end it there. One last plug for our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. We have a busy June coming up. I don't know that I have dates yet to plug, but please keep an eye. We have a really interesting set of congressional education programming coming up. And we will end it. Thank you again to our panelists. This was a great session and I hope everyone has a great rest of your Wednesday. And until next time, thanks so much for joining us.