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| 00:00 | I wanted to welcome everybody here we go I wanted to welcome everybody we've got a couple of uh new faces which is always welcome here and uh those of you who haven't been here before if you could just take a few seconds a very few seconds to introduce yourself and then I'll turn it over to Mike for our program today um anyone like to go Joyce are you there Kevin this one so I'm Joyce Penner I'm a professor at the University of Michigan I work in aerosol and Cloud interactions and climate models |
| 00:44 | ah well welcome and if you'd like to be on our mailing list regularly just put your email in the chat we'd love to have you um participate with us Kevin would you like to say hello yeah hi there yeah I'm Kevin Lister um I've been out the frame a little bit over the last uh two years or so with his legal issues and things on the go at the moment and Mike and I put a paper into the U. |
| 01:13 | N Channel or dialogue in 2018 um and nobody listened to it I read it I don't think and everything we said is now seems to be coming horribly to pass well uh welcome on that the spirit in comment uh but I think it's one we all um can appreciate uh uh how about Len l-e-n would you like to introduce yourself Lynn are you there Lynn going once twice three times okay well uh you can introduce yourself later uh by putting something in the chat and have that I don't know if I'm pronouncing your name right uh Aisha station yeah I'm a fan coach Professor Frank |
| 01:54 | coach group and I'm working on levitation electrodynamic levitation of aerosol particles and where are you uh at Harvard University in Professor francoch group oh great well delighted to have you here and uh just to repeat again if you'd like to be on our mailing list uh put your uh email name in the chat and we'll happy to add you and with that I think yes go ahead thank you okay thank you um okay well this is the if you're here for the Healthy Planet Action Coalition you're in the right place uh this is our |
| 02:32 | regular meeting every two weeks and we're we're just delighted to have a professor Chris field here today to um have a conversation with our steering Circle member and then and my neighbor Mike McCracken uh it'll be an informal uh afternoon evening morning wherever you may be and uh I simply want to um again invite you if you're not already on our mailing list and would like to be put your name in the chat and uh if you have any suggestions for upcoming meetings or upcoming meetings uh we still have some uh openings for the for |
| 03:09 | the remainder of the fall in terms of the agendas and the speakers we'll have so please let us know with that I'm delighted to introduce Mike and the show is yours Mike oh well um thank you and uh thank you Chris for coming again and being with us um I guess I've known Chris for 25 years is it or something from back yeah early ipcc maybe more than that or something even and and I guess I I should say as a disclaimer uh my uh my wife worked for in the technical support unit when Chris was uh doing a lot of leading a lot of the ipcc |
| 03:51 | thanks helping arrange meetings all over the world it was great fun to go well it meant a lot of work but I got to go to some meetings as a spouse it was great um so we're here to talk about the uh commission um the climate overshoot Commission report and Christopher bass one of the three scientific experts sort of advising them we thought I'd go through and ask a number of questions sort of the link through aspects of the report for a bit and then we'll have some uh we'll open it up for everybody else to ask ask some |
| 04:31 | questions um so Chris um first on the the whole idea this was started the first time I think that a uh uh commission was formed of exclusively pretty much of government officials or ex-government officials but high-level officials to consider um details of the science and put together their own version of what happened instead of sort of versions coming edited I mean coming from the scientific Community to them could you say a bit about how that worked and how the how the communication worked with them and the the how they framed it was there |
| 05:16 | anything that worked especially well or poorly in communicating with them and thanks because we all want to try and communicate with people at that level and we'd like to learn some lessons about how to do it well I wasn't involved in in assembling the idea of the commission or the commission but the way I think about it is there a whole bunch of theories of change about how we move the needle on on climate action and ipcc for example is is based on a theory of change that says prior authorization from governments is the pathway to |
| 05:54 | delivering messages with impact and I think the theory of change for the overshoot commission is one thing you might think of as moral Authority that that um former and in cases still active senior leaders in government don't have the authority to you know pull the strings of power directly anymore but but have a license to speak at a broader more General level of about things that ought to be prioritized and I think this theory of change is being tested but given how difficult it's been to you know assemble accelerated climate action |
| 06:46 | this one seemed very reasonable to me and this is a topic where um I would say authorization to speak from uh from a kind of official capacity within a government or for a scientific organization actually been somewhat challenging and so coming from the outside as senior thoughtful leaders who have some credibility and reason that their views ought to be paid attention to makes a great deal of sense and I think they did a good job of operating in a way that kind of reinforce that core of credibility that the Commissioners were a group of really |
| 07:34 | widely respected people and mostly from government and um senior roles within things like the WTA WTO where pascalami had his has some highest profile position a couple of NGO folks and a couple of of academics but but mostly coming from this what you might think of as the Elder Community um and they had the three science advisors who really you know were relied on extensively to kind of set the stage of what we know and what we don't know and where the limits to knowledge and action are and then they they had |
| 08:18 | a a really influential uh group of Youth climate activists gathered from around the world who weren't members of the commission but who raised an important voice from uh younger generation that was influential in in the directions that uh report of the commission finally took so I I think they did a a credible job of making the case that their voice ought to be listened to whether or not it is listen to of course is a working progress and we'll see where that goes yeah so um I mean one of the things that |
| 08:57 | was interesting was the title of risk that was uh was um in their in the title of some of the things they they talked about and they focused out um I mean the scientific Community has this decision framework of thinking about things and wanting high confidence so it ends up at the center of of various spreads of events but then the public Community usually talks about risk which is about worse plausible outcomes and how to be resilient to them and stuff did did you notice a difference in decision framework between |
| 09:33 | them sort of saying wow the risks are are big compared to what I sort of see or or was there any difference or did they just sort of say well we're going to accept what the scientists say and focus on the center results or something it's a really good question and you know I uh again the commission had sort of Spun up and began to operate by the time the science advisors came in but I was struck by two aspects of the way the issues were framed the first is that it has been in a really challenging to be forthright |
| 10:18 | about the high and increasing probability that we're going to miss the Targets in the Paris agreement and and I think that you know within uh um within the especially the NGO Community there's um a lot of adherence to the idea that even the 1.5 goal is is still achievable when none of the evidence is really pointing me even close to that direction and so you know the authorization to even talk about what Thinking Beyond being able to uh to stabilize it 1. |
| 11:03 | 5 and I don't know if um you know at recent cops people have have really been you know I surround the idea that 1.5 is still alive and and you know I I think it's it's important to acknowledge that it's technically feasible but it certainly feels like we've reached a point at which any responsible entity ought to be having serious conversations about how to think about what we will do if we reach the point where the 1. |
| 11:38 | 5 Target or the level of 2C Target in the Paris agreement are are passed and and if if the trends were on Now continue were sort of blown through and so I think that uh that framing of a license to speak to this this issue that's been almost off limits is is really important uh one of the things that I thought was really interesting in the way the report came out is that there was a really strong emphasis on cutting emissions and many of the Commissioners felt really strongly that it's important to maintain the narrative around the technical feasibility of of |
| 12:23 | the 1.5 Target and if you read through the port what you see is uh you know an ongoing tension between the recognition the importance of cutting emissions and and at least the technical feasibility of 1.5 but the relevance of of putting pieces in place to at least not be totally unprepared in the event that we missed the targets so so one of the strange things about this 1. |
| 12:59 | 5 and the ipcc way of calculating it it's a sort of a timed lag to decadal average over the globe uh measure when the current I mean the current situation is we may have a year a 1.5 in the next few years 1.5 exceedings and and most impacts don't have much to do with what's happening about the time lagged metric of um you know a decadal average metric of global average temperatures so was there any questioning of this metric and and how they came to 1. |
| 13:36 | 5 and I mean the Paris choice of 1.5 was sort of arbitrary anyway um yeah it's I mean was there any questioning of this metric and thinking about it no you know I think the uh the the position the commission took is that our guidance is the guidance and the Paris agreement and you know I got to admit that I I've personally been surprised that given the wording of the Paris agreement can talk so much about 1. |
| 14:11 | 5 and not about well below two which is what I read is really the Target in the Paris agreement and and of course the Paris agreement does speak to the need for efforts to assess the feasibility of of 1.5 or to pursue 1.5 and and I think that it it makes sense to me to you know have um an agreed upon Target and make that a starting point for discussions but I should say Mike the there are a number of reasons that um 1. |
| 14:50 | 5 is is arbitrary in its choice and certainly uh eclectic in the in the way it's defined for me personally the motivation for the overshoot commission is to put efforts in place to explore what we're going to do if the amount of warming is substantially larger than the world is is okay accommodating and you know what the the issue I don't think should be that there are a whole bunch of strategies that get deployed as soon as 1. |
| 15:35 | 5 based on a particular UNF Triple C definition gets breached but what we do need to do is be prepared to make increasing investments in dealing with overshoot as it emerges and and you know from my perspective um we were already in a situation where we're seeing unacceptable levels of damage and we ought to be deploying some of the things that are described in the overshoot commission report so they came up with this This Acronym care where therefore sort of recommendations and and the C stands for cut emissions and it was interesting that they really |
| 16:16 | said that is out fossil fuels I mean they really made it where they they were aiming um I mean it would be helpful if if this sort of mitigation approach could actually get started I mean the emissions keep up but we're still at whatever 80 percent of the energy coming from fossil fuels or something do you think this group saying that might have extra influence or they might do it or are we just still going to keep struggling and have to wait for new technology just to overwhelm the problem eventually well well if it's okay I want to plant a |
| 16:58 | small advertisement for another report that's going to be released next month I'm involved with as well this one's from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and and it it's also about accelerating action on climate and that the key theme of that report is how you build a durable political Coalition around climate action and what strikes me about the emphasis on phasing out fossil fuels is that that that's a concept that sounds good in a kind of a technical feasibility world and you can |
| 17:35 | calculate the um you know the technical Readiness level of all the alternative Technologies but but in the real world of existing politics and finance and electoral Cycles it actually is really hard to see um dramatic acceleration on the path of of phasing out fossil fuels and with this American Academy report lays out is is some of the options for accelerating the decrease in emissions in a way that um you know will likely ultimately phase out the use of fossil fuels but doesn't sort of require it as a starting point |
| 18:23 | and I I have to say that in uh in the formulation of the seed you know I I personally advocated with the commission and with the Commissioners for a for a decrease emissions from fossil fuel is the primary objective rather than phase out fossil fuels and I think we um we have some opportunities to just be a lot more uh committed to building durable Partnerships that can actually work rather than aspirational goals that are going to be a lot more challenging to achieve okay so the a was then uh to adapt or increase adaptation and things and it |
| 19:08 | was really interesting um uh I guess though one wonders if they recognize that there's limits to how much you can do on some of these things or what that is going to require right um I mean I sort of didn't notice very much focus at all on sea level rise and what might happen along coastlines um in the report which is something that seems we're headed toward as we destabilize glacial streams and stuff and and the very high heat index and other things or something like that I mean they sort of talk a lot about adaptation |
| 19:47 | but it's going to be a real challenge to do that yeah absolutely you know my sense is that a really really important theme through all of the overshoot narrative is the theme of mitigation deterrence and all of you know back in the early days of discussion about climate change in the 80s and 90s there was a lot of concern that discussion about adaptation really should be kind of out of bounds because the idea that you could adapt to a changing climate would mean that people wouldn't invest in the decreases in emissions that really |
| 20:30 | solved the problem and as we begin to look at uh carbon dioxide removal is very much the same kind of arguments are made and and of course with social engineering the same kinds of arguments are made and so I think it is important to uh recognize that this Narrative of the risk of mitigation terms runs through all of the overshoot Technologies approaches but it's also important to um appreciate that I think the Commissioners are aware of the idea that that not only are there physical limitations to how much you can |
| 21:15 | do with any of the Technologies but there are a wide variety of of Social and economic reasons that almost any conceivable pathway that's going to work is going to require some kind of a mixture of approaches and and I don't think there was the intention to say we can adapt to massive amounts of warming to you know two and a half three four uh degrees of warming but there also wasn't a lot of focus on on what uh more ambitious adaptation strategy would look like I think that's a compelling need for the |
| 21:56 | future is is really figuring out what what happens if we dramatically increase the finance that's available for adaptation yeah I mean I remember well because during the first national assessment yeah they were we said you're not you can't talk about adaptation in fact you shouldn't even be talking about impacts yeah and everything we're gonna we're gonna have it under control before that yeah so they are and and in their care initiative was to remove um and there was a lot of focus on |
| 22:33 | the natural potential for removal or removing into the biosphere and stuff you're you're an ecologist I keep hearing the reports there was one of just a guardian article saying most of these carbon offset things aren't working very well um and everything what do you think is the real potential for or getting nature to take up more carbon and stuff they they talk about the green wall in Africa which sounded interesting but what do you think is the real potential can we and and how long is it going to take |
| 23:08 | yeah well um the the guardian articles have been about the carbon crediting for avoid of deforestation which isn't carbon removal that's decreasing emissions and of course the challenge is well there's two challenges one is that we really need to find a way to stop deforestation is one of the most critical environmental crises that the planet faces in terms of have had in biological diversity and it also was a you know major source of mission still the case that 15 of emissions or so come from from deforestation and while it |
| 23:47 | isn't CO2 removal it's something we've got to figure out how to do and and we have to figure out if we're going to do it through Market mechanisms how to how to credit the actions in a in a in a way that people trust and and believe and as the guardian has pointed out or as there was an article in Science magazine just a couple of weeks ago arguing that if if avoided deforestation is credited by comparison with a counterfactual of what would have happened you know without these credits being purchased that's when they don't |
| 24:25 | deliver and there was a real problem there that needs to be solved we also know that um that there are lots of places around the world that used to have force that no longer have force and they're really wonderful opportunities for bringing those fours back in in some places but not in others and it depends on you know what population is how much the climates change what the land use Dynamics are across the space and if you um a couple years ago my group published a a paper summarizing all of the published |
| 25:09 | results on how much carbon removal we might get from natural climate Solutions in the rest of the 21st century and those those numbers range from 100 tons of CO2 equivalent to about 1500 tons of CO2 equivalent and if you put that in the context of the range of removals that the ipcc in the 1.5 report said would be necessary for stabilizing at 1. |
| 25:39 | 5 that's and of 600 to a thousand so the the published numbers are 100 to 1500 and almost all of those published numbers are what I would call technically feasible and I think the socially economically culturally feasible is is um for the low hand um in in the review paper that my group did we we uh argued that it would like be realistic to get something like 200 uh billion tons of CO2 equivalent in the rest of the century and and that is uh a contribution from natural climate solutions that could be made with uh improved management of existing uh |
| 26:30 | forests and soils and with a really dedicated effort to build Forest back in areas where they've been removed so that's a meaningful contribution that's a significant amount of the uh of the carbon removals that are required it's it's not a very huge amount a huge fraction of the total emissions budget for the rest of the century that's the land aspect of it you didn't that's the land aspect right and and you know um one of the big things that we're all tangled up in now for carbon removals is |
| 27:11 | is this question of um you know how to do the crediting and and you have to have uh title to the land to get carbon credits if you do it in the ocean who gets the credits and uh and how do you do the monitoring and verification a uh I personally am very optimistic about the prospects for Meaningful contributions from not only land ecosystem but Coastal and ocean as well you know potentially at the scale of you know maybe doubling that 200 billion Dutch number again uh putting it in the context of our overall emissions which are you know |
| 27:49 | order of uh 40 billion tons a year it's an important but not a yeah quantitatively dominant element of the work that needs to be done okay and then finally the one that this group's probably most interested in is the E which was to explore um and and it was interesting that that press conference this e aspect seemed to be the one that got most of the questions um and stuff uh and I guess one of the sort of surprises well I guess the first thing that's impressive is they actually put it on the whole agenda and included it where |
| 28:33 | ibcc sort of has been seems to have been somewhat more reluctant about that um so so that was impressive and and there then they talked about a moratorium on deploying but but if you read their research part it said you can go all the way up to outdoor experiments as long as you're not causing something like significant harm to trans boundary or something like that which was quite interesting I mean that's quite I mean it wasn't sort of just ruling it into saying only in the laboratory kind of thing which other things have done so |
| 29:10 | that was interesting um I I have two questions and then we'll get to the rest one is the scenario they seem to use in evaluating solar intervention climate intervention um was wait until there's a severe problem and then do some big sharp sudden crop um and things as opposed to and and during that time you do a lot of research to learn a little bit more or something as opposed to start early small and sort of learn as you go and not face this potential dramatic cooling effort sometime in the future probably too late because it's |
| 29:52 | after the emergency has happened an ice sheet is Flowing or whatever so did they consider more scenarios than just sort of the emergency response kind of version so there was a lot of uncertainty among Commissioners about whether solar Jew engineering ought to be considered at all and there were some Commissioners who at the outset really felt that the risk of mitigation deterrence was simply too great or the risk of unintended consequences was too great to even put forward an agenda that recommends additional research |
| 30:37 | and um and there were also voices saying that if we want to comprehensive understanding of the options for dealing with overshoot it it's it's just not responsible to take a careful look at all the options and and that tension was very uh near the surface throughout the discussions and I think is a little bit surprising that the that the social engineering stuff got in there at all given how strongly some people felt that it it shouldn't be a part of the agenda at the outset so I think the answer to your question |
| 31:25 | about how it might be deployed and once more has learned about it it didn't get pursued partly because I I don't think the commission you know wanted it's findings to uh to indicate that that it's advocacy for research and thinking about deployment of soldier was really gone farther than it had gone and um and I think that what the commission wanted to do was be able to let's say crack open the doorway to increasing progress in Solo drill engineering research in a way that uh you know it didn't buy a specificity |
| 32:16 | foreclose as many options as it opened and and I I read this as being a reasonable way to go in the context of and what the Commissioners regarded as the kinds of especially uh political forces that are you know going to be challenging any steps to move forward with solo geo-engineering research so on my second question is actually about something that seems to come up constantly and I don't understand it as a scientist which basically says they say unwanted and unforeseen consequences or something to be greatly worried about |
| 32:59 | or that there are very large uncertainties and and it seems to me there's two things about it one is we have a sort of small well a series of volcanic eruptions over time um that are of different sizes that models seem to represent pretty well um and and I don't think we sort of see those kinds of consequences and then the question and the sort of shows the model seem to be working pretty well and be a good tool to look at it um and and then um the other issue is it's a question of what they're comparing to I mean it |
| 33:36 | seems to be without solar intervention we're headed into dramatic I mean 2.6 degrees C or something we're headed into dramatically more serious situations we've been getting surprises along the way and very much unwanted consequences it what is the reference point they use for talking about that is that compared to a baseline of pre-industrial or something or are they doing the comparison with respect to what would happen in the future without it well I I think the important contribution of the overshoot commission on this is is to |
| 34:18 | push in the direction of increased investment in soldier of engineering research I I take the overall tone of your question saying well why aren't they more uh explicit about the you know the current understanding of the profile of of risks and benefits and why aren't they more explicit about what's often called the risk risk framing where the risks of social engineering are are compared with the risks of not doing solar Geo engineering which is the the risk of an overheated world and um uh certainly all of those were discussed |
| 34:59 | but but I think the starting point for many of the Commissioners was that this is a um unacceptable topic from the perspective of mitigation deterrence and you know I'm sure all of you have encountered the idea that that intentionally polluting the atmosphere just is is kind of uh really ethically and morally different than than decreasing emissions greenhouse gases and requires some kind of a different standard so I think both of those considerations made it challenging to take even baby steps into advocacy for solar |
| 35:51 | Geo engineering research and and personally I think the commission deserves a lot of credit for having really kind of thoughtfully tackled these issues and proposed a pathway that that does let us learn more things from more research and you know open a door to figuring out whether this is a set of technologies that we might want to develop for deployment at some point so I I think it's it's important to understand this as a as a step in the direction of increasing knowledge rather than as saying why didn't they go further and |
| 36:29 | they didn't go further because this is a really scary thing for most of the commissioners as it should be it's sort of it's sort of I mean it's just sort of the only way to to offset further warming um I mean mitigation is going to take a long time to get to net zero emissions or zero emissions and CDR takes a long time to build up it just seems you know that ignoring a path of trying to start and slowly learn as you go while you're trying to keep the temperature about where it is or slightly lower |
| 37:06 | um would be a you know a sort of a more rational pathway but let me bring you back to your comment about adaptation though and in the early 90s when when we started talking about adaptation in the National Climate assessment and the ipcc is a lot of skepticism about whether that was okay because of uh concerns about mitigation deterrence and I think that that we really need to talk about all of these overshoot Concepts Technologies in the context of this deeply rooted narrative about risks of mitigation deterrence |
| 37:48 | yeah I'll go you know at least for me pushing in the direction of saying we need to understand more about these things what their limits are what their risks are is it is really important way to advance the conversation in a way that brings the climate change activists the governments as as well as the um the whole family of entities that are responsible for the technologies that greenhouse gas Technologies the Renewable Energy Technologies and the um the overshoot Technologies into what I hope will be a more constructive |
| 38:29 | conversation in the future okay thanks let's see others if you have questions please uh I guess raise your hand and we'll uh get in their herb do you want to start you see first on their list but thanks Mike and thanks really appreciate the your your comments uh can I call you Chris um when I started work talking with Mike and he's indicated that he knew you and we'd like to invite you which was you know very exciting and then all of a sudden as these things tend to be next thing I knew popped up in on my computer |
| 39:06 | a uh a webinar with uh with you and Sam Harris and then I saw a Wall Street Journal article a couple days ago about the latest Shenanigans involving Exxon and there you were quoted in the middle of the article so I I admired the breadth of your uh climate work and your media connections um so I guess uh I think it would be fair to say that for many of us here uh our Our concern is these days certainly it wouldn't be the case a decade ago maybe is uh more we're more concerned about cooling deterrence than we are |
| 39:43 | about mitigate deterrence essentially that that you know the sort of the the you know that's flipped in the other direction and uh but but I I guess my question to you is that you know I've I follow him we we at hpac followed the over suit commission pretty closely we had Jesse Reynolds here way back in January at the beginning of the commission activities and so forth and the final report by recommending uh and I don't have the language in front of me but essentially the the language on the the E part of |
| 40:17 | care started off with the recommendation for a moratorium or moratoria uh and you know and then the language moved to research and when I looked and I googled you know a simple Google search to see how the media were were picking up the reports um you know I was disappointed that it seemed most of the major media were mostly ignoring it but whether it's the major media like the guardian or some of the more specialized climate Publications were not always but many of them had articles that essentially the |
| 40:50 | headline was you know commission calls for a moratorium on geoengineering and I guess my concern is um that that perception and you know we all know how few people actually read the substance of a report may lead to setting back check the cause of research for cooling because of how it was you know formulated and articulated and put into into the you know to the language in the report and I don't know if that was maybe part of the intention of you know as you've indicated some of your commission members you know may have not |
| 41:26 | have been comfortable even going as far as the report did or whether that may be an inadvertent consequence of how it was worded so I'd just like to get your your feedback on that well is a real good question I I agree with the overall framing that you presented I should emphasize that this consensus report and and all of the Commissioners were okay with the recommendations and you know personally I I feel like the the recommendations around uh celebration management really do Advance the um ambition to learn more about the |
| 42:19 | technology and I recognize that much of the media coverage did emphasize the the moratorium part and you know the media Outlets that cover this have a have a perspective but I think that there haven't been very many major reports that have been explicit about the value of additional research and and especially in the context of overshoot you know I didn't really speak to this before but but my sense is that in many ways the most valuable contribution of the overshoot commission is is to transition us to a conversation about |
| 43:09 | overshoot and that once you're in that conversation about overshoot then you really need to think about the whole family of Technologies and in in that sense I think the idea that there's a recommendation for a moratorium on on solo geoengineering deployment is less important than that solar geoengineering ought to be part of the portfolio of responses that we should be investing in and understanding more about I hope you're right in terms of that's how it's perceived that's all I I you |
| 43:49 | know the report did strike a balance my concern is just you know the I wouldn't be surprised if uh you know in next week you see a an announcement from an alliance of anti-geo engineering groups you know going around to every major Nation on the planet demanding The Institute a moratorium the way that Mexico did a few months ago that's that's my concern you know but maybe and I don't disagree with that but I would say that that the uh media Outlets that have the traditionally strongest reluctance about solar geoengineering |
| 44:28 | were critical of the report for its um advocacy for additional research rather than saying oh they agree with us but I didn't see too many of the anti-geo engineering organizations say oh they agree with us that's true and it allowed quite a range of research and stuff that was interesting yeah okay uh Robert thanks very much Chris um the employment opposite commission has taken this technical view that um advancing the advocacy for research uh can be uh has to be framed in this cautious way of accepting a moratorium |
| 45:11 | on deployment and and that seems to make sense in the context that um all of the Technologies do need more research before they'd be ready for uh fulfilled deployment but uh it's uh it just illustrates the political context that you're working in as you've been saying and I just wanted to um dive more into this concept of mitigation deterrence that you've been using because it's just it seems to me to be a fundamentally flawed concept because if you look at what can mitigate climate change then increasing Albedo |
| 45:49 | does help to mitigate the risk of extreme weather events the risk of temperature rise the risk of systemic disruption but realistic prospects of emission reduction actually don't mitigate any of those risks and so we've got and and all of those risks bring immense suffering so we've got this ethical dilemma here that people are misusing this concept of mitigation in a way that will allow massive suffering in the in the coming years and and disruption of our system so I offer that as a comment and be |
| 46:31 | interested in your response important concept to keep in mind when when you think about well what's motivating the arguments about mitigation deterrence or or it's it's often called moral hazard is you know what I regard is uh um inappropriate focus on on um being able to assign blame to Fossil energy companies for the climate crisis and and I think that as much as anything the the motivating concern that drives people to worry about the moral hazard is that somehow the oil and gas and coal companies will will |
| 47:25 | escape the blame that that they deserve and you know I I think it's it's hard to understand the intensity of the concerns about solo geoengineering and unless you make that up part of the background that you start from and I I think that um does set us up to you know potentially live in a world where we're seeing more damages than we should because we're not executing on all the technologies that we should be and so I think it's frustrating part of the of the narrative it's one that's really it's it's |
| 48:11 | difficult to deal with from the context of the of the science and engineering approaches that most of us start from and it's one that uh I mean personally I hope would be a real focus of the research because really uh well-designed social science experiments should be able to yeah you the answer on how important mitigation deterrancy is there isn't yeah I mean the moral hazard issue of sliding back to fossil fuels just doesn't seem all that practical giving all the technology advances and economic benefits of the new |
| 48:58 | technologies that are coming on so it's I'm wondering if the sort of the moral hazard argument might go away over time or not keep persisting but it's it's interesting you say it happened I would be surprised I I think I think it's really Central to the way a large fraction of the climate activist Community thinks about the future and in respect and especially the community that thinks about solutions to climate crisis being essentially about wealth redistribution and a lot of concern that that solo Joe engineering |
| 49:41 | lets the wealthy countries stay wealthy when they need to to redistribute and you know I'm certainly not they're advocating for a redistributional approach but I think it is a a really important thread in climate approach that's Global South takes and the environmental justice Community a lot of voices Clive thank you yeah I just want to see if you can tell me if I've got things wrong here uh Chris thanks for you know for your presentation um so I totally agree with what Robert tulip just said um we know that the West Antarctic ice |
| 50:26 | sheet past its point of no return and I think about 2014 nearly 10 years ago and so that's going to collapse without uh you know some kind of cooling effort so they seem to be quite happy for that that to go ahead um it's more important so it seems to be more important to them to piggyback their agenda of um redistribution and put lots of people you know basically make most uh settlements at sea level uninhabitable within the coming decades so that they can pursue their their redistribution um ideology |
| 51:06 | and um and and what is it about them that they cannot see what everybody else sees last year apparently China was working very hard to build two Coal Fire pal new coal-fired power stations every week because they need the energy for all this you know manufacturing and metal ore processing they expect to be doing for us so we can build our renewable machines why is it they can't see what everybody else is seeing and just recognize reality and live in this sort of Never Never Land of Hope and which is just utterly utterly |
| 51:47 | off you know it's just off from from reality am I seeing have I got a extreme view here am I seeing it wrong what's going on I mean they seem to be either clueless or utterly irresponsible to be not to be even researched not to even allow research in uh Solitude engineering so people like me have to do this in our spare time in our our own personal resources doing the best we can to see how to remove methane from the atmosphere looking at all the chemistry and so forth and looking to see how to make benign aerosols that could and do |
| 52:22 | Marine Cloud contribute to the Marine Club brightening work that people that are doing to actually cool the oceans am I what am I going where am I going wrong here lay all of the responsibility for the pushback on um entities that I think that that um economic redistributions path to success I you know at Stanford my colleague Mark Jacobson and so um incredibly outspoken advocate for you know a transition to a hundred percent when water and solar system within the next uh decade or so and and you know argues from |
| 53:10 | uh uh technical perspective that that that's feasible we don't we don't need these other Technologies and and there's certainly many voices in the scientific community that are saying similar things I would like to make one observation about where I'm seeing a big contrast between the stratospheric aerosol philosophy and the Marine Cloud brightening and and it seems like social pushback on Marine Cloud brightening has been much much less than it has been on stratospheric aerosols and uh even though there's compelling evidence |
| 53:53 | that um Marine Cloud brightening you know may not be able to uh deliver that much cooling it's certainly possible that there are important lessons to learn from the Marine Cloud brightening experiments so far which have mainly been interpreted as you know local and scale focused on uh protecting Great Barrier Reef for example rather than fit the global climate system even though you know one could make the argument that the um that the influence of the Marine Cloud brightening experiments had been done is it but at least as big and much bigger |
| 54:40 | than uh um than the ex then the field experiments with stratospheric aerosols that in general have not occurred yeah thank you very much Chris thank you Ron thank you thank you Mike and thank you Chris very much for for joining us and I'm sorry that um in a way you you've entered the den of of you know Pro cooling uh folks here so we're kind of piling on and using you as our uh go ahead and let me get clear that that that I'm coming at this um partly I'm you know you guys asked me to speak to what the commission said and |
| 55:26 | I'm happy to do that but but you know my role in in the group of science advisor really was to uh help people see that they're are opportunities and even responsibilities to be serious about the solar geoengineering agenda so I I think that you know from the context of the commission I I was coming at them uh as an advocate for cooling technology great thank you yeah so so uh in in that in that in that vein let me just let me just make I'm an economist political Economist and I and I come from the left |
| 56:05 | I'm a radical Economist so I I very much favor redistribution in fact I don't think um there's any way to you know achieve uh zero greenhouse gas you know uh anthropomorphic uh anthropogenic zero greenhouse gas in any in any kind of reasonable time frame without some kind of mandatory uh regime of transfer of of you know funding and resources I did a paper that I calculated you need four trillion dollars just to offset the revenue from petroleum exports or petroleum related exports of countries that depend on those exports for over 10 |
| 56:42 | percent of their foreign exchange for their export foreign exchange so you know the economic constraints and I and and I I I you know I I hear you saying the same thing that they're they're very very uh real economic constraints to Rapid transition that the devil even the most you know sympathetic actors I mean like they you know the example the president of Ecuador uh recently although they they've apparently you know uh been able to to reverse that somewhat but they still did engage in drilling in the in |
| 57:15 | the rainforest because nobody ponyed up even half of the revenue that uh they they had expected to receive from that discovery of oil in the in the uh in the uh Amazon region there uh but any case so my just to you know re-reiterate let me sorry uh uh so I did a calculation and this is this is all IPC not CC numbers so this is you know sort of the the the consensus view the 44 uh gigatons uh ghg by 2030 we need to get down to 44 to have a 66 chance of staying well below two percent uh two I'm sorry two two |
| 58:01 | degrees Celsius uh for the rest of the century um that would and and the best estimates I've seen now is about 58 gigatons or so again anthropogenic right now uh um it would take uh in my account you know just a straight line 3.2 percent per year an average reduction per year to get to 44 by 2030. |
| 58:27 | and right now the debate as you as I'm sure you know is whether it's plateaued or not there's no there's not even talk of declining ghg it's all about well did we did we actually you know uh plateau in 2024 or have we actually you know so I just you know the the whole unreality of the entire Viewpoint that somehow and and you know and this is just to get to Net Zero uh by by two thousand um uh well it's it's to get to 44 by 2030 and and and Net Zero I think by 2070 or something like that uh in the IPC report |
| 59:05 | ipcc report so so it just you know I don't think we need uh you know the science the the the actual data that the the ipcc is providing that we're all seeing indicates that is just not at all anywhere near realistically possible to get to that Net Zero goal the stable below two point uh uh two degrees Celsius so you know I'm just I'm kind of you know the it just seems that we need we need a breakthrough commission we need a commission to just tell the truth about this whole this whole fantasy of |
| 59:42 | of greenhouse gases uh you know preventing ever increasing catastrophe and so I I just you know I'm curious about you know you know if if that was if the con if the Commissioners understood this you know that that the the moral hazard is in the other direction the moral hazard is not cooling fast enough right now and it doesn't have to be solar gear engineering we have in our report we have 18 possible methods you know many of them very you know using soil using you know uh White roofs you know all kinds of ways to prioritize cooling |
| 1:00:18 | right now in whatever methods and you know for the higher leverage I agree with Mike you know that that you know the the the the the responsible thing to do would be to to gradually you'll start testing now and Learn by do and you know go perhaps with a polar strategy for for SRM or some of the higher leverage methods but you MCB whatever it is it just it just seems that the the priorities are all are all wrong right now they're they're they're all about emissions reduction and they're not |
| 1:00:46 | about the real priority which should be cooling right now and that includes the devastation to the the developing countries and the most vulnerable people are going to be the most affected so all those people that are you know um uh worried about climate Justice the Injustice is not doing the cooling right away seems to me I've just you know if you could respond I'd appreciate it well I I don't know how many of you go to the UNF Triple C cops but it's it's amazing there how much of the emphasis is on oh |
| 1:01:23 | if we we just get serious about this we we can have omissions by 2030. uh we can hitting at zero by 2050 and and the evidence base for that as you say is um a non-existent and in fact all the evidence is pointing in other directions the reason that I think this overshoot commission report is so important is that it really is the first International product that has I think it it started out with the expectation that would say we're headed for overshoot and we need to prepare for it and and I think the Commissioners were still in this |
| 1:02:06 | even if we'll see for Amy oh we all we have to do is get more serious and we'll be able to to reduce fast enough and I think that's why you see the the C is the as the the first strategy and the care framing but I also think it's really important acknowledge that this report is an important step in the direction of saying we are going to need to deal with overshoot so um would I have been most comfortable with something that was more emphatic and more ambitious about the agenda yeah um do I think that this has the |
| 1:02:51 | potential to move the needle like I I hope it does and I hope that this is kind of building momentum for uh more serious discussion about what we do about ownership okay uh Josh UA so Chris first thank you very much for the report and your efforts in it um I agree that this helps to identify where things are likely headed what seems to be missing is the quantification and it's good to follow an economist Ron of the social costs of the overshoot um so particularly I mean military costs from increased Warfare |
| 1:03:46 | um migration control costs emergency response costs those probably dwarf the cost of transitions that Ron was talking about so I encourage any follow-up work to actually focus on the opportunity costs that the overshoot implies that leads to two related suggestions which are that um the question of the politics um assumes two problems the first problem is is we don't have a meaningful liability mechanism it's actually not about redistribution it's about liability liability isn't a transfer of wealth |
| 1:04:34 | into compensation for the forced removal of health and the overshoot point is only going to drive the loss and damage discussions much farther and make it much more likely that we see serious conflict over not the redistribution but actual payment to try to limit what would otherwise be the transfer payments required to compensate um the last is just that the politics that you're suggesting are intractable assumes lack of leadership um leadership can dramatically change the trajectories of what countries are |
| 1:05:16 | willing to do and I wish that the commission had said more about how leadership could actually avoid mitigation uh deterrence concerns while also promoting transitions of the kinds that make the most cost-effective sense and the most timely changes those so those are the three basic things I wanted to focus on are you know the the need to focus on the opportunity cost economics the liability and political concerns and the lack of leadership I um I don't disagree with any of those one of the interesting features of these |
| 1:06:03 | conversations is that they're they're often um rooted in in a fabric that has a lot of distrust especially distrust of um rich country proposals to fix things and you know I I think the um that level of distrust can be overcome to some extent with with goodly approaches to make sure that everybody has a chance to be a part of the conversation and you know Jesse Reynolds who spoke to you guys earlier has transitioned out of the overshoot the decimals project which is intended to stimulate so the geoengineering research in the |
| 1:07:01 | global South and there's a really important role for that but I think it it um you know it's important to recognize as you know several of the recent comments have that that the problems uh that'll preventing action on this aren't the sort of rational evidentiary ones that it really is the politics the concern about [Music] um what's a just outcome of who's who's using this agenda in order to uh Advance narrow personal interests that there aren't really the global interests and you know I totally agree that if we if |
| 1:07:49 | we lived in a world with more um Affinity of leadership with a with a you know clearer eyed uh focus on on the real issues and we're having a very different conversation sure let me just it's important to move then and move the needle and and you know I I think baby steps um Can can play a big role in this even even if they're not the kind of transformational change in thinking that made me think a lot faster yeah again that's why starting with the realities but without the quantification of the |
| 1:08:36 | economic costs is still helpful um but the one thing that you might think about again for further work is responding to the narrative about um the rich countries created this problem they're not paying liability SCE is just getting them off the hook on the cheap and that's a actually a significant moral concern and I don't know how one responds to it other than the pessimism that if we don't let them off the hook on the Jeep more people will suffer but the consequence of doing that is actually to potentially generate |
| 1:09:17 | political solutions that nobody wants such as Warfare right one of the I mean one of the interesting things was mentioned to me when I was talking to someone about it is that there are no really developing countries or countries of the South the ones who are most vulnerable who are really pushing for intervention and raising the issue um and and it's a little bit surprising that those who will be most impacted aren't I mean I guess they haven't had an opportunity to be engaged enough but you would think they would be hearing |
| 1:09:53 | more about it and so would be raising the issue for consideration so and very interesting well certainly if you look at the Commissioners the majority are from the global South and you know this report is a is a chance for them to be on the record and advocating for addition research in Solo geoengineering okay herb you have another question uh yes um listening between the lines I think there's a lot less daylight between your perspective and ours than the oversuit commission's perspective in ours and I I |
| 1:10:32 | appreciate that and but I I think you know we're we're h a h what are we healthy plan hpac the the a to me is the the key thing the action we were established two years ago to do more than uh discuss and debate and learn even though we've had some incredible meetings with folks like yourself and so looking forward I guess I have two sort of questions one is are you aware of any uh you mentioned at the very beginning there was a another report that come that's coming out that may Advance this |
| 1:11:04 | agenda are you aware of any other reports institutions uh people countries that uh would be supportive in moving the you know we call it a kind of climate Triad you call it care you know we we call it basically you know emission reduction removal and cooling um but that you know that that you know could uh whether it uh you know at the upcoming copper and any other Forum uh could could move the agenda forward and uh it may be that you are aware of of one or more but you're not comfortable saying them publicly so you |
| 1:11:42 | could say that and then tell Mike or whomever privately um and then I guess the second the second question is a specific a couple of us have been kicking around the idea um you know simple to come up with ideas like this that what's missing is an international scale and scope uh NGO that advocates for um you know emergency Cooling in the context of emission reduction and adaptation and all the other things that you and I and you know in the overshoot commission report Advocates that there doesn't I mean there's silver lining in |
| 1:12:20 | the U.S and they operate a little bit internationally but when I look at to see for example the Human Rights Council of the UN is about to issue a report on human rights and geoengineering that the draft basically says that you engineering is incompatible with human rights I mean as I interpreted it uh the African climate Summit the there were 500 ngos that uh you know came out two weeks ago totally against geoengineering and I don't see any any countervailing uh you know ongoing entity you know we try to do is the little we can do we're |
| 1:12:57 | volunteers you know we have our lives you know we none of us well won't speak for anybody else I certainly don't have any particular influence over Elites and so forth so I mean do you have any thoughts about whether attempting to create such an institution which of course would take money and support um maybe a worthwhile effort uh so anyway those are sort of two related questions how do we move the ball forward is that the broader question yeah well my personal hope is that this report of the overshoot commission |
| 1:13:32 | is a meaningful step in the direction of increasing discussion about funding for um research in this area and the answer to the question about are there other high-level groups that are ready to put big funding into this I I don't believe there are you know there's the recent report from ostp about developing a national scale program in the US this decimals program that I mentioned is is in putting a tiny amount of funding into encouraging uh researchers in the global South to be involved in the agenda but I |
| 1:14:21 | think there's a very real sense in which this report is kind of you know day one of the effort to build the kind of Institutions you're talking about just one quick follow-up um I didn't see in in the report or the press conference anything about the future role of the overshoot commission itself are this staying in operation and if so to to Lobby or to do other reports or what that's to be decided the the commission was convened to do this one report and there hasn't been any decision about |
| 1:14:55 | what the follow-ons might be okay well I think they said they were going to cop 28 to print make a presentation they have a presentation in Captain yeah I mean there there will be um some investment in presenting the report whether there's additional work that's goes beyond the report has not been decided so let me recommend again the the commission take on the job if or get people to task it would take you on the job of cost estimating all of the opportunity costs of the different choices um which will then make actual control |
| 1:15:38 | of carbon emissions look potentially uh not sufficient but Geo engineering is probably going to be again the least cost fastest cost of voider again not just going to push the moral hazard issue of taking low-cost solutions to the problem but if if there's a meaningful liability mechanism estimating those costs really would be helpful okay uh Robert Chris your uh the the conversation perspectives in this conversation have been just extremely helpful in helping to frame the debate because one of the problems in the debate is that the |
| 1:16:29 | emission reduction alone Community have as one of their primary slogans follow the science and I think that what you've been explaining is that if we do follow the science then uh the need for Albedo enhancement uh is uh is a clear uh priority so it's like an anomaly in the um scientific uh Paradigm of the the idea that we can address climate change just by cutting emissions so uh the uh opening up that question of how do we how do we get an evidence-based approach because if people if people there was an earlier |
| 1:17:14 | comment that people wish to ignore evidence and that's not really a sustainable um attainable approach because uh if you just say you know we're not going to consider the facts of the matter because we've already made up our minds uh then the research comes in uh you know other people in the public say hey but but what about this you know you're just pushing a political agenda that's that's ideological that's not based on evidence and facts and reason and science so so I think it's it's really helpful to uh to |
| 1:17:49 | open up that question about you know what does the science really say and yeah thank you for the comment and and to make sure that the science has a chance to answer as many of the questions as possible oh Ron okay you're good last you're on mute Rob last comment I'm sorry to to to uh you know make so many comments but um the as as I put in the chat there the Arctic momentum group The Finnish youth group has been a very uh very helpful sign and they have a really excellent um uh some excellent material excellent |
| 1:18:32 | video an introduction to their conference that I think um will hits the nail on the head in terms of you know what what many of us have been saying um and also I mean to just raise the issue many we we keep talking about the climate you know the Natural Science but again from a social science perspective the the greater danger May indeed be you know social collapsed you know that that if if we don't get a handle on this quickly uh the situation with uh with the continued you know increasing disasters and climate refugees I mean |
| 1:19:04 | we're already seeing you know Europe and the Us and other Advanced countries you know put walls around themselves to prevent more immigration I mean a lot of it is violence and failed States and so forth but but the climate is is is increasingly a major factor so uh I I just I just want to raise that that that the you know the uh the talk about uh you know democracy and social justice and climate Justice that I I'm very partial to but you know we if if we don't move fast enough to to to to to put a lid to put a Band-Aid or a |
| 1:19:40 | tourniquet as as Robert tulip has has uh has offered uh on the on the bleeding planet Earth quickly we may see a situation where we're going to have you know basically you know a a an uh increased Fascism and authoritarianism and and collapse States and violence and you know just just the degradation of human civilization as we know it so uh you know I I hate to leave us with that thought but hopefully Chris you'll have the last word so but um it's a serious problem well uh just as a closing comment I |
| 1:20:20 | really enjoyed the conversation thank you for all of the questions and comments and personally I think it's really important that we do Transition the conversation about climate from the Paradigm of saying oh we can decarbonize fast enough and that that's where we should focus to having one that really has a balanced consideration of doing what we can in decarbonization but looking at the ways that we might control overshoot and I I feel like that reframing I don't know feels to me like the big contribution of the of the recent era |
| 1:21:06 | and hopefully it opens a pathway to many of the kinds of considerations that that have been raised in the points that many of you made and I that's what I hope is that we get a chance to really have a serious consideration of of what overshoot means and what we're going to do about it so you feel very fortunate to have been associated with a high level group that that is trying to take the issue seriously and I think the really incremental nature of the report should be understood as a as a reflection of |
| 1:21:49 | how challenging it is to move a needle and political environment that we're in and and not reflecting you know of a lack of appreciation that the problem is really serious and and demands much more ambitious action than has been brought forward so far excellent well thank you very much for a wonderful discussion you know it's been very interesting to have you participate in and I agree I mean it's interesting that they uh put it on the agenda so so well I think I wrote you that there was one thing that it might have been interesting to |
| 1:22:36 | do instead of say cut emissions was uh what a colleague of mine from Arizona state says it was formerly Kai and British Petroleum and he said the trouble with saying cutting emissions is if you cut emissions before you cut demand you're going to have riots in the street and so what you really need to do is cut cut demand and the way you cut demand is the deploy deploy deploy um all the new technologies as fast you can make that happen fast which is hard it's happening but making but the reasons it's hard |
| 1:23:12 | um and so then it could have been deploy deploy the first one and so the type the acronym could have been dare or something like that which was interesting because the report was a bit daring in that sense I noticed yesterday that um Ron DeSantis said that if he's elected gasoline it'll be two dollars a gallon in 2026 and I I thought the only way you could conceivably do that would be to have massive penetration of electric vehicles so that the demand for gasoline goes down right thanks everybody okay thank you very much okay herb do |
| 1:23:48 | you want to keep a few of us on or for next discussion or what discussion of what's next yeah the steering Circle uh hang on there we'll have our usual meeting thanks everybody see you next time thank you thank you |