welcome to the science for the public lecture series science for the public is an organization committed to bringing the science information issues to the general public this is our website for our program avon step for science for the public and i welcome you to contemporary science issues and innovations tonight we take up one of the most serious issues of our time climate change and to explain the global ramifications and the need for global policy we're very pleased to have henrik saline an authority on global policy pertaining to environment and sustainable development dr selene is an associate professor of international relations and the director of curricular innovation and initiatives at the party school of global studies at boston university he's also faculty coordinator for the international relations and environmental policy program there and a core faculty member of the center for energy and environmental studies and a fellow with the party center for the study of longer range future at boston university and rick so lean is the author and coeditor of several major books on global issues of environment and climate change along with many professional articles he's also written numerous articles for the general public on the need for global policy to deal with climate change and these are available on our website where we specially grateful for the opportunity tonight to get his views on the climate issue and to learn from him what the public can do welcome dr selene and you very much and i'd like to start by asking if you could give us some background on the recent paris agreement conference of course so i think you're absolutely right that climate change is one of our sort of defining topics right now and sort of it says a lot about our collective ability to deal with major issues the way we deal or don't deal with with climate change so that the major meeting here in paris there in the last december was also referred to as a cop twenty one which is twenty first conference of the parties what that means is that the very very first global agreement around climate change was adopted in one thousand nine hundred two and since one thousand nine hundred four countries have met about once a year to seek to further develop policy around reducing greenhouse gas emissions dealing with climate change adaptation and so forth so the paris a meeting was the twenty first annual meeting of that process so they've got the routine down yes it and it seems like they're mostly have to have the routine down to to disagree rather than agree but yes well does that have anything to do with the number of countries involved  how many is it that are involved in that so so right now there are over one hundred ninety five countries plus the european union as a separate entity that attends these meetings so every single  member state of the of the united nations all one hundred ninety three un members are part of this process and the object is to come up with an agreement to implement some kind of a policy to get rid of the c o two is that the idea yes just give us well how difficult is it to do that well so all countries admit going off gas emissions so that means that all countries seat at the table and i would say this is especially important for the medium sized and the smaller countries the large countries always have a seat at the table when it is the g eight or g twenty or any of the other forums they are always there also important to bring everyone at a table because many of the countries that are the least powerful are also the ones that are going to suffer the most from climate change going under water already  vulnerable to at least have at least try to have a say exactly what's the state of the well then at the end of the that meeting they were we i guess they go back to sign an agreement  hopefully lay out a plan for what countries are going to do between twenty twenty and twenty thirty so we did we did do death so that was that was achieved  book to have also been a fair amount of criticism of the paris agreement that it's not stringent enough that it's not doing what is what is necessary so after the agreement was adopted and the text became publicly available you heard both supporters and critics of the agreement exactly i remember jim hansen kind of almost irritability about it but it's hard to imagine this many countries will sit down and work almost anything out i suppose from your expert perspective what did you think would you have said well let's low because over the last twenty one years we have we have not gotten very far and in fact if you look at that very first agreement from one thousand nine hundred two that i mentioned and the most recent agreement from twenty fifteen there i would argue there is actually not a lot of movement right so and i would also argue that many of the the most important things are actually left outside of the agreement right so the limit average global temperature increases to two degrees celsius we reconfirmed that and actually even even strengthen that insist we're going to work towards it's a one point five degree increase instead the agreement also talked more about adaptation it talked more about the needs of developing countries he talked about what is known as as a loss and damage about sort of how to think about possible  compensation for for countries that have really not contributed to the problem but are now suffering the consequences so there were there were some there were some good things in there but really all of the the core parts were left outside so anything that has anything to do with countries actually pledges to do their commitments are outside of the agreement in terms of what they're going to do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that is what is known as nationally determined contributions to countries formulate them themselves there was really no negotiation they decide entirely what they want to do and then that is sort of left outside of the agreement similar to the agreement talks a lot about where that money is going to come from what the responsibility is of individual countries all of that is left to the future right that's the critical stuff absolutely and so what do you think i mean how many here the disagreement will actually have had a real effect or not there's going to be an informal review in twenty eighteen and then the first sort of formal review of countries commitments is going t place in twenty twenty three and the general hope then with the supporters of the agreement hope is that between now and basically two thousand and twenty three countries will gradually become more convinced that this is a topic that we should take seriously that we should do more and are then gradually going to ramp up their commitments but it's sort of a way too early to see deaths and one of the problems with leaving all of this outside of the agreement is there is no sort of legal backstop if countries don't increase their commitments or even started to backslide all of their promises are not in the shape of legal commitments but in the form of looser political commitments which is much much easier to to change so we are to a very very high degree relying on the goodwill of future leaders across the world to round up the countries commitments there and if we look at twenty thirty forty year or so international environment the cooperation about discussions around financial assistance foreign direct  and all of that there is a very very long list of promises that have been broken yes so the question is really is it's this time i'm actually different or are we sitting here in two thousand and twenty three and having the same discussion thin god you really used to it yes now is there any alternative because you have a global urgent situation where you're going to have a lot of people having to relocate and lose everything is there thing that is in the legally binding agreement is formulated in rather vague terms right the money here right so like anything with any specificity as a status left outside of then it's not enforced there's no way to enforce we are entirely relying  on countries to do that through the development of their own national law and so that enforce it on their own but if for whatever reason they don't do that there is really no international mechanism that that can kick in ok in terms of moving toward like we knew about energy and stuff a lot of countries have just gone ahead and china is doing some impressive stuff even right now that perhaps on how you read it but that's a big country with a major one of the major contributors to the c o two problems and there they seem to be moving ahead can you be effective on individual basis like this if you can't get a group together do you see what i mean yes he has that you have a european block of nations very committed and right so on no i mean i i am one of those that are sort of generally supportive of global agreement or a weak legally binding agreement the option was a week legally binding agreement or no agreement at all right so in that sense we got we got the best possible outcome is just from from my perspective the best possible outcome is not nearly enough to respond to the severity of this are you exactly and by the time they do do something that might be just too late at the rate we're going if this acceleration of the  climate changes is for true is there in terms of the paris conference then there go back for an agreement in april is that correct yeah and but that too if everything is right right so now we're just going to go back and sort of reconfirm that what they did in in paris was actually do the correct thing right there so there's going to be celebrations and toast but there's going to be no no furder commitments are or anything like that that's rather disappointing like to shift to the united states since its we're one of the major contributors to the c o two problem and you know we have a number of problems around this right now an intractable congress and a lot of climate denial climate change denial of our situation it is i think quite is very much about what should we do rather than should we do anything at all and i are saying that the problem doesn't exist and it's not our fault or something ok so we have that difficulty my sense from you is that the european public is very knowledgeable and is concerned what do how do you read the american public by contrast is that the same or very sort of a growing level across the american public about about climate change but on average that level of concern is lower than in the corresponding europe european countries and also there tend to be larger princes in the us a for instance one of one of the major determinants on where you are with respect to the severity of climate change a d climate change policy is your party affiliation and that there is a considerable difference between people the self identifies democrats or independen republicans there is a fairly high correlation between party affiliation and beliefs around these issues right so it's a much more divided public so if you look at in europe at any given time in the european union you have prime ministers and presidents from conservative parties from social democrats from liberal parties from green parties who are all sitting around the table and they do disagree obviously but they all if they are all in agreement that we should that we should do something right if and that is sort of cover to across the political spectrum in europe to a much higher degree than yes do you see a reason for it off and here why we should have this divide well there have been  in europe and i think that that have sort of they have been much more successful in penetrating the public's awareness and try to make it out there is much more disagreement into scientific community and then they're really not there so the other aspect is that we have a very powerful fossil fuel industry is that different from europe or do you think that's a reason contributing reason for the ability to sort of control some down policy developments that day that day that they don't that they don't like so that is that is definitely part of it just out of curiosity since europe has mainly parliamentary systems i don't know if you have lobbying a lobbying system that is quite like i don't know if anybody has one that has gotten so out of control as ours but do you have that issue european union but the sort of nature of lobbying around environment is rather different in washington d c then than in europe in europe it's much more about organized interest it is industry or environmental organisations or public health organizations or whatever it might be it's much more sort of centered on shaping policy absolute based on  recently over the last couple of decades in the us it's not been about shaping policy it's about stopping policy it's about detailing policy right it's about sort of preventing policy from from happening and in the first place  washington it's about trying to find common ground you don't always get what you want exactly it's about it's about making policy it's about it's about moving forward right a little more grown up but the other thing to ask you about about the fossil fuel uniform framework for essentially calculating this sort of the global scale of fossil fuel subsidies countries do it in many different ways many countries are not particularly forthcoming exactly how how they do it but the  international monetary fund the i m f a couple of years ago did an estimate and their estimate is that globally we are spending a little under five hundred billion dollars a year on direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry and that is sort of that's that's pretax subsidies and that is subsidies for production and export and that is a below and there are other environmental organizations that have tried to of fossil fuel production sort of the environmental costs of coal mining and drilling the public health cost and really not right then in their in their conservative estimate they came to the number one point nine trillion dollars a year in you know wrecked and in direct subsidies and again others have done try to do it in the slightly more encompassing perspective and they didn't put it at two or three or four largest economies that meet every ever so often including the united states and china met in two thousand and nine and pledged that they would start phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and that was seven years ago right and we have seen very little in fact fossil fuel subsidies have actually gone up in a number of countries since since two thousand and nine but there are a growing number of advocacy organization environmental n g o s who are increasingly targeting sub start seeing some real movements down the path that i need to go so the two things the empty agreements they are just words yes that they and the other is that this is really expensive to keep the american heart from the damage it's doing to the globe to health and everything else it's enormously expensive and that people don't really know about it but we have the message from the fossil fuel energy that my gosh it's going to be so expensive so difficult to make the switch and so it's a kind of a vested interest absolutely message order for the united states to sort of go forward the president put out a clean energy act and the supreme court is sort of holding things up there can you give us a little background on this and tell us what implications are sure so the president and the e p a are doing this in large part because congress have not  the commitment that the united states made in paris in december so in february the supreme court very surprisingly hadn't really done anything like that in the past put a stay on the implementation of these rules so the rules basically said that states were supposed to come up with their plans for how to deal with emissions from coal fired power plants and it was supposed to be done in the fall needs to be reviewed before we can move forward so what will happen next is that in june a federal appeals court in washington d c will have oral hearings around this both to the states that wants to kill the plan will make their case and the administration with the backing of a small minority of states not another small minority it was so i think it was twenty six or twenty seven states who were in favor or of the state and then you had a longer twenty states who sided with the administration so again this is sort of an indication of how split the country is like roughly half of the states thought that this was a good idea roughly half of the states almost certain that it will be appealed and if supreme after the supreme court and if the supreme court then decides to pick that up there are probably the earliest we can do the oral hearings there would be in the spring and there probably the earliest you can get a ruling from the supreme court would be in december of twenty seventeen so we're talking about fifteen months from now exactly after the election anything else and so there are a lot of nervous people i'm sure around the world watching weren't a part of that so the the difficulty of getting anything from the united states is not necessarily due to any one person but by the  which is still very strong and i guess we have to wait for the the election i'd like to go back to your point about groups of people i guess like three fifty or and a lot of people are writing books around this that are very excessive all documentaries are being put out around this issue to get to the public what's your prognosis do you think we can do it well i mean there are if we sort of quickly go back to the to the polling data i think that there are some some positive news for those of us who who think that the united states should do more in this area and that is that we are starting to see  and uptick in in support among democrats but also but also independents so there is now in a in a number of polls a a small majority that are in favor of doing more slightly  bad news in this poll so is that a lot of people that want to do more are really not willing to pay a lot of money in order to do that so once you start asking people do you want to do something you have more and more people saying yes i think that would be a good idea of gasoline go outside of something like that yes but on the other hand if you could address through these groups the issue of these subsidies which are robbing us blind and we could be putting that money if you can in this development just that seems to me that that's a duty of these groups like three fifty dollars while they do this you can argue that right so it can move things in a different direction but if all things were good do you think that the public could move this would get this resistance out of the way i think so another sort of positive part of the of the polling data is that you're starting to see real differences across ages yes and you're starting to see more support there is decidedly more support for climate change action among younger voters than there is if you had asked people in one thousand nine hundred five you think we'll have same sex marriage in the united states in twenty years i think the vast vast majority of people would have said no absolutely not and a lot of that was a shift a generational  shift and that was a generational shift that included young people from both parties yes right so this is this this is my hope that we are going to see a similar generational shift on on elected so hopefully us at least on some basic level they're also responding to to public opinion and public demands and not just the interests of organized groups right that's very interesting that we might get that kind of a american engineering the problem away which we apply to many things you know and i thought i would just ask what you think the number of articles that are springing up into it china is definitely looking into it and india and sort of other countries as as well and in part is because you're hoping that there is a technical solution so you don't have to do it is more difficult  l changes as long as you do go down a path where you start doing behavioral changes i'm not too concerned about also at least looking into the geo engineering option i would be very concerned if we put all our eggs in the geo engineering basket and said no no we're not going to do any behavior we're not going to do any policy changes we're just going to wait for this new fantastic technology to emerge somewhere in the future those kinds of arguments make me make me really really really nervous but if you're trying to do it at the same time that said oh it's very unproven we don't know if it's possible if it is possible we have no idea what the consequences are going to be and i think that there should be at least some application of the precautionary principle here just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should do it so i think there needs to be a lot of careful thought to going into this but if we go back to the goal in the paris agreement of limiting the two degree celsius in in moving towards one point five degree even the path that an effect that they will have but those that tried to say that under the existing suite of commitments we are going to end up probably much closer to a two degree world than we are to a two degree world and there is absolutely no way we're going to get even close to a one to one and a half a degree world without geo engineering the only way you're going to be able to do that is if you can take very very large amounts of carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere out of the atmosphere it's not it's not about preventing more carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere it's about taking out very large portions of what is already in there right and that's then what would a geo engineering bit comes in yes so we'll just have to see where that goes but there's certainly a lot of advertising for and perhaps makes people worried because engineering can only be a small part of an overall policy approach i don't think it would be at all useful to see it as the main way of  the other is also dat whoever cracks this particular not stand to gain a lot of money as rent there's a lot of money invested there is a lot of money invested in it right so it's not only don't we don't have to do so much but those that would be a to for front of this also stand to make a lot of money we're back with the old guard the all over again with the same kind of control over there there's a risk if you don't really you don't if you don't  en also realistically how much time do we really have we keep having these meetings and meetings and you're saying twenty twenty three it goes on and on into the future but every close to two degree target then global greenhouse emissions would have to peak somewhere between five and ten years from now and that seems very very unlikely  so what and this is sort of one of the things where you sort of really unfair that most of the projected emissions increases over next ten twenty or thirty or forty years are going to be in developing countries so when i say that global emissions have to peak they obvious have to peak in north america you know most i have to peak in europe and china and elsewhere but they also have to peak in most seen anything up to this to anybody realistic you know on this it's really tragic that we can affect something and finally what can the public do in your mind is is there a need for the and complex issue and there is nothing that i can't do as an individual and i think that that is fundamentally wrong is a number of things that you can do as a as as a concerned individual i would sort of encourage anyone to do you have enough insulation do you have the right the right windows have you taken basic conservation measures if you're even lucky enough to own a house have you looked into possibilities or put in solar everyone wants me to write but there's also things that you can do collectively there is a lot of focus on sort of a bottom up approach you can join local community organizations that are working with local says to think about climate change mitigation and agitation in your in your own communities you can ask questions of politicians you can vote for politicians who support your opinions on on on climate change so i am actually sort of fairly optimistic on the end that there is a lot of things that people can do if they want to do it now i think a big push for for everyone who wants to see more is trying to convince more people that they should do the right but once there is a willingness i think there's an ability to do a fairly large number of things now twenty five years of global negotiations right it's it's clear that we are not going to solve this from from a top down perspective the right hope so be can get that global legal framework in place set the common rules of the game  chart out the sort of common path which we can go down but the actual work will have to be at a local and national level that's where the that's where the real action these is going to take place and that's going to involve people like you and me well i hope we can pull something off because we need to do something rather urgently and i wonder if there's any time in history where you need just the whole mass of people on the globe do get behind a movement dr