Date: Nov.13^th, 2019

Time: 15:30-17:00

Speaker: Robert Falkner

Venue: Room 502, the First East Building B, Zijingang Campus

【Speaker Intro】

Robert Falkner is the Research Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE. He is also an Associate Professor of International Relations serves as the Academic Director of the TRIUM Global Executive MBA, an alliance between LSE, NYU Stern School of Business and HEC Paris. His research is focused on global environmental politics and international political economy, and he has published widely in these areas, including The Handbook of Global Climate and Environment Policy (edited, 2016) and Business Power and Conflict in International Environmental Politics (2008). In 2006-07 he was a visiting scholar at Harvard University. He is an Associate Fellow of Chatham House, the London-based international affairs think tank, and a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs.

【Abstract】

In 2015, the international community reached agreement on a new international climate treaty. The Paris Agreement, which sets out an ambitious agenda to keep global warming to below 2C, was described by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a monumental triumph for people and our planet. However, the existing national pledges for reducing greenhouse gas emissions fall short of what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement's objectives. Is the new climate treaty the breakthrough that the world was waiting for, or is it just another futile attempt to bring rising global emissions under control. This lecture reviews and assesses the contribution that the Paris Agreement can make to the global fight against climate change, and whether the major emitters of greenhouse gases (from China and the United States to the European Union) are doing enough to avert catastrophic climate change.