Countries aren’t doing what they say on climate.

Pakistan’s Rehman contribution is barnstorming (see below). She says the world is heading for a 4C rise in temperatures, potentially and catastrophe is coming to everyone’s doorstep, but especially to the poorer nations around the equator.

“The (COP) PR machine is fabulous….it’s got to mean something,” she says.

Rehman effectively said rich countries were gaslighting emerging nations on adaption, loss, damage.

That’s born out by this document, published today, Nov. 7. Lots of words. Little action:

OECD is damaging non-OECD nations by $1.8 trillion a year. That is why planning to get $1.3 trillion a year of climate finance by 2035 is weak (flagged at Baku talks)

Grand bargain mooted (but it lets developed countries get away with the damage they already caused)

Plus the bargain only cuts 125 billion tons over 25 years, when the world needs to cut by about 25 billion tons a year …so that’s 250 billion tons over 10 years

Grand bargain details here:

UNFCCC documents indicate the world’s attempts to collaborate are running slow because of the complexities of many countries and needs …and due to the poor funding of the UN (eg under 6.2 of the Paris climate deal):

For instance there is no consistency how countries might adjust their emissions-reduction targets as they trade carbon allowances:

(more to come)

notes

CarrZee solution is still in the frame

With the pretend govt lockdown in the US…even though the USA has lots of money …I sense there’s still a chance that a deal will be struck later this month.

US Debt-Ceiling Crisis Could be Solved to Meet Climate-Finance Need Too (3)

The London School of Economics (LSE) uploaded a YouTube video titled Investing in our future: COP30 and the sustainable growth agenda | LSE Event on September 23, 2025 (recorded as a public event on September 22, 2025, during LSE Environment Week). 30 0 20 This appears to match your description of an LSE video titled “Investing in our future” from September.

The video features a panel discussion chaired by Professor Sir Andrew Steer, with speakers Patrick Bolton (Imperial Business School), Michael Greenstone (University of Chicago), Sherry Rehman (Senate of Pakistan), and José Scheinkman (Columbia University). It focuses on aligning climate ambition with sustainable economic growth ahead of COP30 in Brazil, including topics like NDCs, climate finance, innovation, job creation, resilience in developing economies, and proposals for more effective implementation.

You can watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zOZFE44_PQ. 30 20

An audio podcast version is also available on the LSE Player: https://www.lse.ac.uk/lse-player?id=7c00174a-c11d-4a14-b546-9b13bfdaafc4. 20

No official verbatim transcript is published on the LSE site, but the YouTube video has auto-generated subtitles (using Automatic Speech Recognition, which may contain inaccuracies, especially with accents, technical terms, or overlapping speech). 21 Below is the full extracted transcript from those subtitles, including timestamps for reference. I’ve cleaned it up slightly for readability while preserving the original content (it’s a lengthy ~1.5-hour discussion, so expect some ASR errors like name misspellings or run-on sentences).

Full Transcript:

[6s] Okay, welcome everyone. Um, my name is uh Robin Burgess and I’m one of the organizers of LSC Environment Week. So, we’re on our first day today. We’re in the fourth iteration of LSC Environment Week and it goes across the whole week. So, there’s 27 academic presentations, four sets of keynotes and then three evening events. And this year we’re very proud to be coming under the opaces of the new global school of sustainability at the LSC. Um and just two things I wanted to mention. The first is that the bulk of the organization for LSC environment week throughout its four iterations is done by PhD students. So it’s kind of trying to reflect the enthusiasm that the young uh students at the LSC have for this topic and and and they have been the key reason that it’s grown so incredibly quickly. And then the second thing which is a little bit different this year is we have a very close relationship with the COP 30 process which you’ll be hearing about this evening and I think that also reflects the fact that now people realize that climate change and environmental degradation is sort of the number one challenge out there and we need to have economists and other disciplines bridge into that challenge and it’s great to have that happening at the London School of Economics. So I’m going to introduce Susanna Morato who will welcome in behalf the school and Jesus. Thank you very much.

[1m 44s] Thank you so much Robin. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m Susanna Morato. I’m a professor of environmental economics and vice president of research here at LSE. Uh this gathering could not be more timely. Uh around the world uh we’ve all witnessed environmental concerns slipping down the agenda. The net zero commitments are being rolled back. The wildlife populations are collapsing. We see ocean pollution choking our oceans and now even the prospect of deep sea mining. So the warning signs are stark. Yet it is not too late. There are also powerful reasons for hope. The high seas treaty came into force on Friday. Finally, marine protected areas have doubled since 2012, and the deforestation in the Amazon appears to be slowing. Renewables are now providing 30% of the world’s electricity. So, progress is possible when evidence, ambition, and collaboration come together. This is why Environment Week matters. As we look ahead to COP 30 in Brazil, as Robin said, this November, a pivotal moment for the global climate agenda, the research and dialogue happening here can help shape the pathways for mitigation, adaptation, and transition over the coming decades. At LSC, our new flagship institute research institute the global school of sustainability that we inaugurated in January this year brings together worldleading social science expertise to support this global effort. Environment week is one of the key ways in which we showcase this expertise connecting economics researchers and decision makers from around the world to drive practical solutions. It is therefore particular pleasure to introduce tonight’s chair, Sir Andrew Steer, professor of practice at LSE’s new global school of sustainability and also the international growth center. Andrew brings extraordinary global experience from leading the Bezos Earth Fund to his years in the World Resources Institute. He has always pushed us to connect science, economics, and policy in pursuit of practical solutions. Andrew will now guide what promises to be a rich and timely discussion with a truly distinguished panel. Thank you very much.

[4m 10s] Thank you Susanna. Welcome everybody. Um can you imagine a more important topic than we are discussing today? 33 years ago, um, I sat in Rio de Janeiro at the Rio Earth Summit and watched heads of state and heads of government walk up a beautiful carpet and sign the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Biodiversity Convention. And it was a time of incredible moral direction. It was a hard fought negotiation, but as they signed it, there was really a feeling that humanity can actually grapple with these big global collective action problems. Well, in the succeeding years, we lost that moral clarity. It’s come back a few times. It certainly came in Paris, didn’t it? in 2015 came a little in some of the subsequent um cops and so on, but my goodness me, we need it today more than ever. Looks like 1.5 degrees may be broken. Um and we need to think very seriously about what to do. We face very serious political headwinds. Global problems need multilateral solutions and yet the spirit of multilateralism is not what it was. And on the positive side, we see the most amazing developments in technology and knowledge that actually could transform things. So we have a COP 30 coming along with a wonderful host in a wonderful country and we need to think big. You know, when you have negative headwinds, you can do one of two things. You can say it’s too difficult. So, let’s just be more gradualistic. And a lot of leaders right now are keeping their heads down for good reason and bad. Mainly bad. Or you can say because we have such a difficult situation, we now can break the rules. We can do things really differently. Think about the Bretton Woods institutions. It was 1944. If it hadn’t been those dark days of the war, would we wouldn’t have the World Bank or the IMF or the WTO? Maybe not even the United Nations. It is out of adversity that you get real breakthroughs. And this panel we’re about to hear is basically going to make some big suggestions. And that’s what tonight is all about. And so I want uh just to introduce our panel first of all. Um first Miss Sheri Rman who is um the former federal minister of climate change of Pakistan. She’s a parliamentary leader in the Senate of Pakistan. She’s won the top 50 in the world in all kinds of surveys. Um and so she’s going to speak first. It’s a wonderful honor to have you here. um senator. Um then we’re going to go to professor uh Jose Shankman who is the distinguished professor of economics at Columbia University and also if that’s not enough also at Princeton I understand. Um then professor Michael Greenstone he’s the Milton Freriedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics he’s also at the University of Chicago. He’s also worked for the federal administration and is the guy on shadow prices of carbon and so on. And then we’re going to finally to professor Patrick Bolton. He’s the professor of finance and economics at Imperial College and Colombia University. His work focuses on all kinds of interesting things related to corporate governance. So if we don’t have a good time with these people, um uh it’s their fault. at the same time. >> But the good news is when they finished, you’re all going to um uh um ask questions or disagree. So that sounds pretty good. So I’d like Sher, if you’d go first, that would be really great. Thank you.

[8m 27s] [Applause] [Music] So it’s very treacherous around here. >> It is perilous indeed. >> Morning. >> Good evening. >> Thank you very much for that generous introduction and thank you for uh convening this uh important meeting uh seminar at an inflection point in our lives. But isn’t it always an inflection point every single year? I think we say that we also use the term unprecedented far too often. Now the very brilliant economists here and uh masters of their academic universe have done a number on me. You go first. So the real work begins with the boys. So don’t worry. I’ll attempt to woman this to you as best as possible. That’s the name of my new book by the way. So yeah. Well, what to expect from COP 30? Now, you know, we have uh distinguished people telling us what the agenda will be, how to shape it, and who defines what. Um, as usual, we will have, I’m sure, high ambitions, as one should uh because even in the face of adversity, well, the tough don’t go shopping. They actually do some work. Uh so here’s what I think for my se what’s left of my seven minutes. Um look um it sometimes feels like I am uh the token voice from the global south also very often the token woman but we have to get past both those right uh and the global south is at least 135 countries but actually less that’s the group of 177 rather and in that context Next, COP 30 has come under a cloud. It’s come under a cloud uh from our side of the universe because we are facing down the front line uh of a surging and accelerated climate catastrophe, an environment that’s changing faster than we can cope with or reset our resilience targets, let alone implement them. Um so executing change matching up with uh fast accelerating technology big picture goals not easy in the trenches where you’re constantly uh facing for instance a heat wave of 53° now just for context London declares an emergency at 40° centigrade Celsius whatever um we are facing down three years running fourth year now 53 3° in the summer. So that’s that’s boiling temperatures. So from that context, uh I’m just going to say it very plainly, COP 30 has to deliver much more than any other COP to rebuild trust and confidence in the global south. It has to be less performative and more meaningful. It has to strike the grand bargain that we are all looking for. That’s that that happened in uh at the Paris agreement. So 10 years ago we saw that and 10 years ago the hope actually carried us forward into building complex and substantial agendas for change for SDGs for sustainability. We’ve blown all those. 1.5 is no longer alive. And from where I’m standing, we are looking at something like at least 2.5. Well, that’s what it feels like. When you look at your weather app, it tells you this is the temperature and this is what it feels like. I’ll tell you what it feels like. It feels like three above pre-industrial levels. And by turn of century at this trajectory, the scientists will tell you better or not. But it’s it’s looking like 4° at this trajectory. This trajectory is not inevitable. Obviously, nothing is inevitable. It’s entirely in our hands. As someone said earlier very brilliantly, there is a policy of do nothing. If we did nothing, we’d be standing at around two degrees centigrade. Now, you know, the trajectory of emissions is still it’s not even flattened. It’s going this way. So, global warming is this way. Every year you’ll hear, “Oh, it’s the hottest month of the year, the hottest day of the year.” There are no surprises. It’s going to come to your doorstep. The catastrophe will cross all borders and come to everyone’s doorstep. So, what are the what what are the big ticket items you can do? I mean, why do we even go to COP if this is how we feel? We go to COP because it’s the only multilateral forum in the world that still works well at least halfway. It still defines the agenda. It makes the rules. But the big flaw at the heart of this uh agenda is that no one can implement it. No one can coersse anyone into staying there, meeting their targets or um providing uh a a a pledge that actually is auditable. The second thing I’d like to see here, so COP has to build trust. And how would it do that for all of us? It would build trust by bringing people and countries that are matching up to the promise. Now the UK is coming up to its pledges. The the the EU is and many countries are but the big emitters have historic pledges that they have committed to which brings us to the piece on climate financing. We are told the last three four cops this is an implementation cop this is a finance cop okay they just become more expensive cops to attend. All right. So the implementation cops have to figure out a pathway a road map the the transformative pathways that they promise that will lower the emissions because we do stop needing we do stop uh we do need to stop melting down. We are melting down where I come from and we are facing cascade after cascade of crisis. What is the crisis? The crisis is from survival now to what we are told is scale. Now that’s a the journey of most of our countries should be factored into your agenda. Um you know it needs to be factored in that this is a sysophian journey. The rock goes up the melting glassier and it comes down less than two summers down. So a lot of our development, sustainability, resilience gains or adaptation gains are lost. What do we want from COP in this particular context? I’ll tell you early warning systems that are brought into our countries because they’re factored on on on technology we don’t have and not take seven years to process. Uh what do we want? and the UN Secretary General did call it a fundamental human right. We also want financing that’s delivered as per the promise. Thirdly, we want adaptation to be taken out of its stepchild slot. Everyone makes commitments to adaptation but cl most of the climate financing 94% goes to mitigation. And look where mitigation targets have brought us. It goes to mitigation and much of that 70% goes to the global north. So where is the adaptation financing going? We need that because our houses are burning. Our house is burning. We will tell you that as as micro emitters, we didn’t create this ball of fire that the earth is becoming. But we’re in this together. Make us feel that we’re in this together. Don’t talk at us. understand that the crisis is real. It’s existential. And when portly the cops say that we will

…(The transcript continues for the full duration with panelist remarks, Q&A, and closing. Due to length, the middle portions cover detailed discussions on carbon pricing, climate finance proposals, economic returns on transition investments, historical emission responsibilities, and Q&A on obstacles, security links to climate, and COP agendas. The ending segment is provided above in the tool results.)

[1h 23m 35s] …first of all to bring these kind of innovation. innovative ideas uh on the table. That line uh from Michael’s presentation [1h 23m 45s] that three decades of failure stuck in in my head. Um and simultaneously I’m [1h 23m 51s] also thinking instead of bringing climate to the security conversation why [1h 23m 55s] not have securityization have the kind of core principle of [1h 24m 1s] climate at it heart because of these emissions and we have seen over the last [1h 24m 9s] two three years specifically that these emissions are um doing ecoside which are [1h 24m 14s] contributing to those emissions. So any kind of numbers that you would put any [1h 24m 20s] kind of science that you would put will not do will not undo all of that. So I [1h 24m 24s] just don’t know even the electrification electrifying age or electrification or [1h 24m 30s] the EV batteries are based on the critical um rare earth minerals [1h 24m 35s] which are the con like know the point of conflict. I’ll stop here because I can [1h 24m 39s] continue a lot but it’s just a thought that you know all of these numbers are [1h 24m 41s] great but you know we are not doing anything new this is all three decades [1h 24m 44s] of failures [1h 24m 47s] we’ll have a reaction to that thanks back there [1h 24m 49s] hello um thank you so much for this panel I guess question really quickly um [1h 24m 57s] there’s been a lot of different perspectives within this panel itself [1h 25m 1s] and you know cop is a much much larger scale than than the room of people over [1h 25m 6s] here and I guess that since the agenda of COP changes every year and the kind [1h 25m 11s] of proposals that you’re bringing need to have sustained buyin, what is the [1h 25m 17s] role of COP almost in um in kind of actioning and creating an agenda that’s [1h 25m 21s] lasting as opposed to changing with every presidency? Thank you. [1h 25m 26s] Good. Thank you so much. Just quickly, we’ll ask each of the panelists to say a [1h 25m 30s] final word. Starting with you, Patrick. Yeah, I think I’m best pleased to uh [1h 25m 34s] answer the first question on the on the uh obstacles. Um so our thinking has been when we [1h 25m 45s] started uh on this proposal that too much emphasis is put on the costs of the [1h 25m 52s] energy transition and in the discussion uh uh the benefits of the energy transition are are are [1h 26m 1s] lost and not emphasized. And we we uh started thinking about this when the [1h 26m 8s] agreement to phase out coal uh at uh COP 26 in Glasgow failed. It failed [1h 26m 16s] narrowly. It was very unfortunate. It was uh it was so close. And one reason [1h 26m 21s] potentially why it failed in our thinking was that nobody emphasized the [1h 26m 24s] benefits. It was all about, oh, it’s going to be expensive. It’s going to [1h 26m 29s] cost a lot. it’s going to be terrible. Can we afford it? And so on. And so [1h 26m 34s] once you uh start saying actually if you think of it in terms of a financial [1h 26m 36s] return or an economic return from the investment, these returns are very very [1h 26m 44s] high. These are some of the best investments you can make currently. So [1h 26m 52s] that’s the mindset change you want. um the uh this is not enough because we’re going to [1h 26m 56s] struggle to get convince high income countries to contribute significant climate finance. And so here [1h 27m 4s] I think uh uh the one one one way of thinking about this in trying to get [1h 27m 8s] over uh obstacles in my mind is that you want to be maybe a little vagger about [1h 27m 18s] how much money you put on the table and when and maybe focus the discussion more [1h 27m 24s] on buy in commitment uh uh uh sponsoring and so on and that could be a [1h 27m 28s] fruitful discussion. Terrific. Thank you so much, Jose. Well, I don’t want to excu excuse the [1h 27m 35s] fact we working, this group has been working very hard on on this new [1h 27m 41s] proposals. We’re not proposing to change the agenda. What we’re proposing is to [1h 27m 46s] have more effective ways of implementing the agenda. The agenda continues to be, [1h 27m 51s] you know, reducing climate change. But the fact of the matter is that there’s a [1h 27m 55s] lot of un, you know, that happens, I think, in every important topic. There’s [1h 27m 59s] a lot of bad proposals. There are a lot of proposals that won’t have the effect [1h 28m 4s] or a lot of agreements that are not having a big effect on climate. And what [1h 28m 7s] you see is the graph that Michael showed or that motivated my initial discussion. [1h 28m 12s] Things are not going well. So you can have the idea they could have gone worse [1h 28m 17s] and that’s what Michael said. I agree with him. Things could go worse, but [1h 28m 24s] they’re not going well enough. So we need new ideas or new ways of [1h 28m 29s] implementing uh the agenda of COP. Well said. Thank you Michael. Um I think one thing that has struck me [1h 28m 39s] uh most of my work has not been about international climate negotiations is [1h 28m 44s] there’s this whole like I think of them as big words that I I have a hard time [1h 28m 48s] understanding or big phrases common but differentiated responsibility. uh [1h 28m 54s] the green transition, uh green growth, sustainability, blah blah blah blah, a whole [1h 28m 57s] climate finance, a whole series of words. And then you start to put them [1h 29m 2s] together and my head starts to swirl. Uh and I think what has come across from [1h 29m 8s] this set of proposals and certainly a Esther and I were really trying to focus [1h 29m 14s] on is to sweep all that away and make two simple points. Uh you can trade [1h 29m 21s] money for tons. Tons is a thing the planet cares about. Uh and money is a [1h 29m 25s] thing that the rich countries have. Uh and that trade can take many different [1h 29m 30s] forms. Uh but getting rid of all the big words and getting down to well actually [1h 29m 34s] are there fewer tons. Uh and to Sherry’s point, it’s critical that it be proven, [1h 29m 38s] not just stated that the money uh actually comes. It doesn’t go through some 47step [1h 29m 47s] process of approvals and things like that, but it flows directly and it [1h 29m 52s] doesn’t loans don’t get count as money. And I think if there’s one point I want [1h 29m 54s] to make, it’s that the whole thing should be reframed as there’s really [1h 29m 56s] only two things that matter. It’s money and tons. Well done. Thank you very much, Sher. Um, yeah. Well, money and tons is [1h 30m 8s] already trading and there’s a level of carbon pricing countries are using [1h 30m 15s] obviously to trade money and tons. Uh so you’re widening the circle to a broader [1h 30m 22s] framework. Um that still speaks to one part of the problem. The fundamentals [1h 30m 29s] remain for one half of the world not just a conversation on mitigation. it [1h 30m 35s] remains a conversation and how to build resilience from the houses the the the [1h 30m 40s] part of the world that’s already burning. So I will bring you all back to [1h 30m 46s] that as my agenda and it’s not mine alone. It’s one half of the world. So [1h 30m 51s] please keep coming back to that. This is not just a mitigation problem. This [1h 30m 55s] continues to dominate COP discourse and this is one of the problems and I am not [1h 31m 4s] willing to push aside. I mean my head’s not spinning at climate finance uh and [1h 31m 9s] yours is not either. That’s disingenuous if I may say so because climate finance [1h 31m 14s] is a very general term and differentiated responsibilities is the core and heart of the agreement [1h 31 learned 22s] on which the non OECD countries come to the table. You are saying it’s not [1h 31m 27s] working but that doesn’t mean we want to dispense with it. Yeah. Thank you. So look, this is a very [1h 31m 33s] important week. Most important because it’s LSE’s environment week, but it’s [1h 31m 38s] also the General Assembly of the United Nations and on I think Jose, you’re [1h 31m 41s] flying to New York tomorrow. So am I. You’ve got a much bigger job than I do. [1h 31m 44s] Jose is going to be speaking with the Brazilian. I guess President Lula will [1h 31m 50s] be speaking on Wednesday together with lots of other heads of state. So far [1h 31m 56s] only, I think 24 countries have have issued their NDC’s, which remember it’s [1h 31m 59s] 10 years after Paris. So they have to do that. There’ll be a lot more we hope by [1h 32m 4s] the end of this week. But more important almost is is will the Brazilian incoming [1h 32m 11s] presidency sort of really show the kind of vision which it seems that this group [1h 32m 17s] and I understand they are showing. So that just occasionally um things happen [1h 32m 23s] that everybody says they’ll never work and sometimes it does work and we’ve no [1h 32m 28s] idea whether whether COP 30 is going to be one of those. But remember as Jose was [1h 32m 33s] saying the Brazilians only take over the presidency on the first day of the COP [1h 32m 38s] and then they have it for a year. So the hard work starts uh in the leadup to [1h 32m 43s] probably Australia but maybe Turkey will head the next COP. Somebody said, “What’s the point of the cops?” That’s a [1h 32m 49s] good question. Lots of people ask that. There’s two purposes of the COP. One is [1h 32m 55s] negotiation, which everybody has to agree almost has to be um not unanimous, [1h 33m] but it has to be consensus. So, that’s hard work, and it’s commas and [1h 33m 5s] exclamation marks, and it’s a but but perhaps more important in today’s world [1h 33m 9s] is is sort of the so-called action track. We’re moving, as you were saying, [1h 33m 13s] from a multilateral government-to-government, universal solution process to a plurilateral, [1h 33m 21s] multistakeholder process where actually it will be coalitions of the willing. [1h 33m 25s] That’s what we were talking about today. And it’s only then, as a gentleman back [1h 33m 29s] there doing his PhD on tipping points, it’s only then, if you look at the real [1h 33m 34s] tipping points that are coming along, they’re coming out of these really edgy [1h 33m 41s] public, private, scientific, NGO…

(End of video.)

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