43. Janos Pasztor on global climate policy and geoengineering

Challenging Climate

This episode’s guest is Janos Pasztor. He has four decades of work experience in the areas of energy, environment, climate change, and sustainable development, including roles as Executive Director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G) and UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change.
In this episode, we explore the political lens of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM), discussing the progress of CDR and SRM discourse, as well as its challenges and controversies.
CORRECTION: Jesse suggested that the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) had a dozen or so members, but Janos pointed out that in fact it has universal membership, i.e., every UN member state is a member.

Links:

• Janos Pasztor’s profile
• Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative
• Janos’ article on the role of UN Secretary-General in Climate Change, in Global Policy 2016

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Chapters

1. 43. Janos Pasztor on global climate policy and geoengineering (00:00:00)

2. Intro and background (00:00:21)

3. Working as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Climate Change with Ban Ki-moon (00:01:17)

4. Have all these international discussions actually made a difference? (00:04:21)

5. Kyoto Protocol vs Paris Protocol: what’s the right approach? (00:07:01)

6. Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G) (00:08:18)

7. Is geoengineering just a distraction from more pertinent climate discourse? (00:10:29)

8. Aims of C2G (00:11:59)

9. Dropping the term ‘geoengineering’ (00:14:43)

10. Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) in models (00:17:20)

11. Reactions to SRM (00:22:18)

12. Do incumbent policy experts and scientists fear disruption of ideas? (00:27:07)

13. UNEA 4 2019 – what went wrong? (00:28:21)

14. Have perspectives on SRM changed since? (00:33:03)

15. No substantial progress on SRM since – why and who is it blame? (00:35:38)

16. The role and struggles of scientists in climate policy (00:40:47)

17. Arriving at a global consensus on SRM – a pipe dream? (00:45:24)

18. Retirement plans (00:48:04)