Five Times Faster: Ways to Accelerate the Transition to Net-Zero
Release Date: 03/21/2024
Modelling Economic Complexity: Insights for Risk Professionals
Climate Risk Podcast
Hear from Prof. J. Doyne Farmer, Professor of Complex Systems Science at the University of Oxford, as we explore new modelling approaches designed to better capture the complex and chaotic nature of our climate and economy. We spend a lot of time on this podcast covering the transition to a low carbon economy, which will be driven largely by policies and technological innovation. These policies tend to be based on insights from economics. And our view on the pace of innovation is often informed by expert judgement. But traditional economic models often oversimplify the world, leading to poor...
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Predicting Our Climate Future: What We Do, Don’t and Can’t Know
Climate Risk Podcast
Hear from Prof. David Stainforth of LSE’s Grantham Research Institute, as we explore the limitations of climate modelling and the implications for risk management. There are some things in life that we can be virtually certain about: if one throws a ball into the air, it will fall back down. Similarly, scientists have evidence beyond reasonable doubt that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased a lot in the recent past. But there are quite a lot of things that we don’t know with any confidence, giving rise to significant uncertainty when we try to forecast those...
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How to Fix Climate Change & Biodiversity Loss at the Same Time
Climate Risk Podcast
Hear from Prof. Pete Smith of the University of Aberdeen, as we explore the overlap in the challenges from, and solutions to, climate change and biodiversity loss. Climate change and biodiversity loss are often treated separately – in science, policy, and even risk management. But as the connections between these global crises come into sharper focus, it’s clear that understanding them together is essential for real progress. In this episode, we break down those silos of climate and nature, exploring an integrated approach and how it might help us address these challenges...
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Carbon Pricing: Harnessing the Power of Markets to Drive Climate Action
Climate Risk Podcast
Hear from Gordon Bennett, Managing Director at ICE, as we dive into theory and practice of carbon pricing and its important role in driving the transition to net zero. Carbon pricing is the poster child of market-based solutions to climate change. The principle is simple: by assigning a cost to greenhouse gas emissions, we incentivize polluters to emit less, and to do so in the most cost-effective way. But there’s a significant gap between the theory and practice. Currently, only 24% of global emissions – about 12.8 gigatonnes – are covered by pricing mechanisms such as carbon taxes...
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Rethinking Natural Catastrophe Modeling: New Approaches for a Changing Climate
Climate Risk Podcast
Hear from three leading experts in natural catastrophe modeling, as we explore how climate change is causing the insurance industry to rethink their approach to modeling extreme weather. In the previous episode, we discussed the challenges facing the insurance industry from climate change – so in this episode, we’re going to dive into some of the solutions. Since natural catastrophe (Nat Cat) modeling was established in the late 1980s, the predictive power of their models has come from the statistical analysis of historical data. But as climate change continues to push the frequency and...
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Uninsurable: The Future of Insurance in a Changing Climate
Climate Risk Podcast
Hear from two leading experts, as we explore how insurance is adapting to climate change and the role of the industry beyond underwriting. Insurance plays a critical role in protecting households and businesses from the impacts of climate change, and with physical risks on the rise, it will become ever more important. However, insurers have also been significantly impacted by these risks, with annual losses from natural catastrophes exceeding 100 billion dollars for four consecutive years. The primary concern is that these physical risks eventually become uninsurable, as we are already...
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Urban Resilience: How Our Cities Must Adapt to Climate Change
Climate Risk Podcast
Hear from Emma Howard Boyd CBE, Chair of the London Climate Resilience Review, as we dive into the challenges of climate adaptation and what it means for our cities. 2023 was not only the warmest year on record, it also marked the warmest 10-year period on record. As we witness first-hand the impacts of a warming climate, including heatwaves, more intense precipitation and increased flooding, the case for building resilience against these risks becomes ever more important. This is particularly so in our cities, where the concentration of populations and economic activity make adaptation...
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GARP’s Sustainability & Climate Risk Certificate: Register Now
Climate Risk Podcast
In this special episode, hear from Tony Rooke, Executive Director at Howden Group Holdings and Beth Gould Creller, GARP’s Sustainability & Climate Risk Program Lead, as they discuss the recent improvements to the SCR’s syllabus and learning experience. Long-time listeners of the podcast will have noticed that we often mention GARP’s Sustainability & Climate Risk (SCR) Certificate. It’s a program that GARP launched in 2020, providing all the foundational knowledge you need to become a climate risk leader within your own firm. This episode is a special one, as we bring...
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Why NDCs Aren’t Working and How to Fix Them
Climate Risk Podcast
Hear from Lord Adair Turner, Chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, as we explore the shortcomings of nationally determined contributions and how they might be improved. Nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, are a bit like transition plans for countries, in that they set out what a country plans to do in order to meet the ambitions of the Paris Agreement. However, NDCs are voluntary, and collectively they don’t currently have us on track to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees, let alone the more ambitious target of 1.5 degrees. Today’s guest believes that this is a...
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Why Nature Belongs in Corporate Thinking
Climate Risk Podcast
Hear from Robin Millington, CEO of Planet Tracker, as we discuss how and why businesses should be thinking about their dependencies and impacts on nature. Sustainability is a complex topic, and for a long time, climate has been at the heart of discussion. Other challenges like pollution and biodiversity loss have often been sidelined. Recently however, following the work of the TNFD and others, these issues have risen up the corporate agenda, within the wider context of our impact and dependency on nature. Throughout her career, this guest has highlighted the importance of integrating...
info_outlineHear from Simon Sharpe, Director of Economics at the UNFCCC Climate Champions, as we explore three key problems that are impeding the transition to net-zero and how to address them.
We know that reaching net zero emissions quickly enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change will be very challenging. But are we making it even more difficult than it needs to be?
Today’s guest thinks so, particularly when it comes to climate science, economics, and climate diplomacy. That’s why in today’s episode, we’ll be looking at how we could make all three work more effectively. We’ll explore:
· How climate science must change in order to generate meaningful action within our political institutions;
· How economists became overly fixated on carbon pricing, while missing other policies that would be even more impactful in accelerating the transition to net zero;
· And how the current model of climate diplomacy could be altered to allow for faster net zero negotiations.
To find out more about the Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR®) Certificate, follow this link: https://www.garp.org/scr
For more information on climate risk, visit GARP’s Global Sustainability and Climate Risk Resource Center: https://www.garp.org/sustainability-climate
If you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback regarding this podcast series, we would love to hear from you at: [email protected]
Speaker’s Bio
Simon Sharpe, Director of Economics, UNFCCC Climate Champions
Simon took up his current role in early 2022, having previously held several senior positions in the UK government, including as Deputy Director of the COP26 Unit, and as Head of Climate Change Strategy for both the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
In 2013-15, he created an international climate change risk assessment project, working with experts from the UK, USA, China, India, and other countries. In addition to influencing the understanding and assessment of climate change risk in its partner countries, its findings were extensively cited by the Scientific Advisory Board of the UN Secretary General. It also inspired new thinking in the academic community, with a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change using it to argue that ‘climate science needs to take risk assessment much more seriously’. More recently, he has worked with partners in the UK, China, India and Brazil to create the world’s first government-backed project to apply complexity economics to climate change. His paper on economic tipping points, ‘Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals: plausible grounds for hope’, was the most downloaded paper in Climate Policy journal in 2021.
Simon has published influential reports and created ground-breaking international projects in climate change risk assessment, economics, and diplomacy. His recent book, “Five Times Faster,” draws from Simon’s ten years’ experience at the forefront of climate change policy and diplomacy.