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November 25, 2022, Opinion

Reposted from -

According to my most recent podcast guest, , the Vice President for Research and Policy Engagement at , agreement by negotiators at the in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, earlier this month on a mechanism to provide funding for particularly vulnerable nations suffering from climate change was a significant outcome, while the negotiators’ inability to achieve substantive commitments by nations to increase their was a disappointment.  Dr. Pizer offers those views and much more in the latest episode of “,” a podcast produced by the .  I hope you will listen to the interview  and our conversation

[As you know if you follow this blog, , but in these podcasts I strive to feature the work and views of my guests, so in the podcast you won’t hear much from me on the various issues that arose at COP27.  If you want to get my own take on that, you can find it and .]  Now back to Billy Pizer …

The eyes of the world were focused on Sharm El Sheikh as negotiators representing nearly 200 countries discussed myriad issues with the goal of advancing international efforts to limit global warming to well below 2° C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5° C this century, as specified in the .  COP27 did not have a particularly ambitious agenda, , but it did move the ball forward.

“We’re now at a place after Paris where everything is a little bit lower stakes, in a sense, because we have the framework in place. And everything now is simply moving that framework along to the next step,” he says. “I think it’s inevitable that there’s a little bit less high-level drama and stakes going on at the COPs. That doesn’t mean they’re not unimportant, it just means that the nature of the COPs is different.”

Pizer says that one of the most significant outcomes during the two weeks of the COP took place 6,000 miles away, at the G20 summit in Bali, where as well as other issues. 

“Now the negotiations have stepped back up,” Pizer remarks. “And I think that is certainly a significant development because I think it’s just very hard to make progress [on international climate policy] without the US and China talking.”

Another major outcome from this year’s COP was to help poor nations suffering from the impacts of climate change. Pizer admits that he was somewhat surprised that the U.S. supported that proposal. 

“The United States has been very concerned about whether or not there would be a notion of liability that went with such compensation. But remarkably, it was on the agenda, it got negotiated. And in the end, there was an agreement to a new fund,” he states. “The United States typically does not like to create new funds. But in the end, they were isolated, and I don’t think they wanted to be responsible for a bad outcome. And I think they also recognized the writing on the wall, that this was what the majority of countries wanted, and so they agreed to it.”

As an aside, I will note that as a result of work by the United States – and other delegations – at COP27,

On another topic, Dr. Pizer observes that the negotiators made little progress on the issue of increased ambition among the parties to increase their commitments through their NDCs, an outcome which Pizer found disappointing.

“There is a broad recognition that we’re not on track to meet the targets, the goals of the convention or the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit warming to two degrees or 1.5 Degrees. And despite that, there weren’t dramatic increases in ambition announced. So that’s almost like the lack of an outcome that was notable,” he says.

The author along with Billy Pizer and others at RFF’s recent Net-Zero Economy Summit in Washington, D.C.

On a very positive note, Billy Pizer cites the power of recent youth movements of climate activism to help advance international climate efforts.

“I think the youth movement and the popular movement to address climate change has that sort of catalyzing role to help move things along,” he notes. “And I think it also creates a dynamic where, with the younger generation … even more committed to taking action, it helps decision makers, businesses, people that are betting literally their money on different events taking place, that this sort of action in the future is going to even accelerate more because the younger generation is even more concerned about it.”

Again, I encourage you to listen to of the series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month.  You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the .  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

• , former Administrator of the
• of the London School of Economics discussing his career, British politics, and efforts to combat climate change
• , founder and executive director of the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition
• , Chair of the within the
• , , and formerly Director-General of the European Commission’s
• , professor at Harvard and a leading authority on geoengineering
• , professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, with considerable experience working on climate change policy issues in the U.S. government
• ,  professor of natural resource economics at Columbia University, and an authority on infectious disease policy
• , John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, and founding co-director of the Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School.
• , who was the lead climate lawyer and a lead climate negotiator for the United States from 1989 until early 2017.
• , the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management, and Professor of Economics Emeritus at the .
• , Associate Vice President for International Climate at the .
• , Chief Climate Change Adviser, Shell International.
• , 30 years of experience in corporate and government positions in the energy sector. 
• , professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego.
• , reporter on the climate desk at the .
• , who covers energy and environmental policy for from Washington.
• , BP Group Chief Economist.
• , professor at the NYU School of Law.
• , Hillhouse Professor of Environment and Law at Yale University. 
• William Hogan, Raymond Plank Research Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard.
• , Archibald Cox Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
• , Dean Emeritus, Paul O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University.
• , Clinical Associate Professor at New York University.
• , Research Professor, Harvard Kennedy School.
• , Shuzo Nishihara Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, Stanford University.
• , Chief Economist, Environmental Defense Fund.
• , Professor of Public Affairs, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin.
• , Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Professor of Economics and Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management.
• , Professor of Economics, Tufts University.
• , Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
• , Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics emeritus, .
• , Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland.
• , the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, Princeton University.
• , the William and Thomas Perkins Professor of Law, Duke Law School.
• , the Juli Plant Grainger Associate Professor of Energy Economics and Policy, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.
• , founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and now Vice Chair of S&P Global.
• , who leads the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell in Washington, DC.
• , Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Environmental Engineering at Harvard.
• , Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago.

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on , and is also available on , , , and .