applause. [ applause ] here's a look at what's ahead today on c-span3. next, a forum on federal climate policy with federal and state officials. after that, portions of a recent cyber security and intelligence forum with a military perspective. comments from federal intelligence and security agencies. and at 7:15 this week's prime minister's questions from the british house of commons. primetime programming begins at 8:00 with a hearing on u.s. foreign policy in europe. the former u.s. special envoy for climate change under

president obama joined a discussion to talk about federal climate policy. virginia and maryland officials were there to provide the state and local perspective and the barbados ambassador to the u.s. talked about global policy. the world resources institute hosted this event. >> good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us this afternoon. i'm the global director of the climate program at wri. the it's my honor to welcome you to the wri event one year later. has the world moved on since president trump's announcement on the paris agreement? i would like to start off though by saying that my own personal reflection actually kicks off on the 9th of november, 2016. i was in marrakech at the climate conference at that time, and of anything that i witnessed was a renewed commitment to delivering on paris.

i've been at many c.o.p.s and c.o.p. 1 if that tells you something and marrakech stands out and what i remember is the steady uptick of countries that continued to ratify the agreement that that day and the following weeks with really signaling a very steely determination to carry on, and that's what i remember from that moment, and now 18 months later that same decisiveness is very much evident. trump can announce what he also, but the reality on the ground in the u.s. and around the world is an effort to tackle climate will continue regardless and unabated, and as someone who has been involved in the climate regime as you can now guess several decades i can bear witness to the fact there has been steady progress forward. if you ask me is it fast or decisive or transform fife enough? not at all, but it has been relentless, and we're really

deeply honored today to have so much distinguished leaders from government, from finance, from international relations to join us to reflect on where we are on how the american people have responded and, indeed, how the world has responded. but before i turn over the floor to our very distinguished senior fellow andrew light who will introduce the distinguished speakers and moderate the conversation, i would like to share with you three brief thoughts. firstly is that whether trump wants to ignore it or not, climate change is real and it's happening now, and the impacts are being felt around the world. 2017 was the second hottest year on record worldwide. you all remembered what happened in california. the pictures of the wildfires are very much with us, and in australia they probing 260 records on heat and rainfall. puerto rico is still recovering from hurricane maria and new numbers are coming up of what that devastation really looked like, and, of course, it's

always the poorest and most vulnerable that face the greatest most irreversible impacts and i won't go into the statistics on the number for africa, but let me tell you they are daunting and sobering. so the second point that is important is that even if the trump administration is abdicating its historic responsibility, and todd is here with us and is witness to that historic leadership of the u.s., if they are abdicating that opportunity to lead on climate, u.s. states and businesses are pushing forwards with measures that will help bend the needle on emissions. they know in they don't keep up they will miss on opportunities to have a clean stable future. to date as an indicator of this, for example, 74 businesses have committed to set science-based target for emission reduction

which align their businesses with the paris targets, so businesses are walking -- or talking the walk, walking the talk, and last december as you all know california governor jerry brown and former new york city mayor michael bloomberg launched america's pledge. it was a new effort to mobilize non-federal climate action, and the initiative was kicked off with the release of ave analysis that was authored by wri together with partners rocky mountain institute which found that states, cities and businesses representing more than half of the u.s. economy and population have adopted the targets, and very similar a similar proportion have declared their support for the paris agreement. think of this, if they were a country these u.s. states and cities alone would be the third largest economy in the world. that matters. that speaks. and this september wri together with our partner rocky mountain institute and the university of

maryland are helping to author the next america's pledge report which will determine how much these non-federal efforts can help to drive emissions downward to achieve the u.s.' 2025 climate goal. and that's for the u.s., so my third somers point what about the rest world? and as i said at the beginning, the momentum begins to grow internationally. for example since last june, over 20 countries committed to phasing out coal power, france, uk, china, ireland, scotland, israel, costa rica all came forward with announcements or a plan to ban the sale of fossil fuel powered vehicles by 2024, 2040 or sooner. new zealand for its part committed to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and the uk indicated that it might well follow suit. china announced that it would restore 6.6 million hectares in to 18. that's an area equivalent to the size of ireland and the last two country that had not ratified

the paris agreement syria and ni nicaragua did so and now the only outlier is the u.s. the negotiations are continuing a pace. country negotiators have continued to work to finalize and will continue to work to finalize the implementation guidelines of the paris agreement. so i think all of this points very clearly to the progress that is being made in the u.s. around the world. it's doubtless encouraging, but if we're really honest we need a lot more ambition. we need to do much more while we stay under two degrees as we all committed to in 2015, so that means that countries with companies and businesses all have to step up, and there's no time to waste. what is really daunting about where we are right now and exhilarating at the same time is whether we act today or don't act today is going to determine what the world will look like for centuries to come. what kind of economies and societies will be viable? that's what we get to determine.

we not only need to avoid locking in emissions trajectories, but as i often like to remind people it's locking out all the good stuff and the real possibilities for sustainable and inclusive developmental trajectories so thinking about this incredible moment that we're at today i now have the privilege to turn the panel and the event over to andrew light, and he will be moderating what i'm sure will be a lively and timely conversation. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you, paula. will the speakers join me up here at the front. >> so welcome, everyone. welcome, everyone. and welcome to those of you who are watching either on c-span or facebook or any other platform that you can see us on today.

let me just explain how we're going to run the panel today. as paul said, i'll start with some brief introductions. i'm going to then lead a conversation here for about 35, 40 minutes with our panelists who represent a range of positions and views and experiences, both on domestic and international climate and clean energy policy, and then after that we'll tone up to you for about 25 minute or so and then close -- and then close the session, so let me just start with the introductions. immediately to my left here is todd stern who in the last administration served as special envoy for climate change as the u.s. department of state, as the u.s. chief negotiator, he advocated political dead locks and close relations between china and a number of other countries on clean energy investments and was, as paul just said correctly, one of the key architects of the paris agreement on climate change. next to him is ambassador selwin hart who served as the lead negotiator on finance for the alliance of small island

developing states in negotiations through paris. he was also director for that of the u.n. secretary general's climate support team and is ambassador of barbados to the united states. next to ambassador hart we have al smith who is managing director and global head of corporate sustainability and oversees the global sustainability initiatives including the 100 billion environmental finance goal instituting their commitment last fall to source 100% of the city's energy needs from renewable resources by 2020. next to val we have second ben grumbles who is secretary of the environment for the state of maryland. he leads the state's work on environmental protection change with governor hogan. he's currently also chair of the regional greenhouse gas initiative which we hear a lot about rggi, i like the acronym, remember rggi, the first mandatory market-based u.s. program to reduce emissions in

northeast and mid atlantic united states and next to ben is angela navarro, deputy commerce secretary for the state of virginia, previously with natural oil resources and has worked with the governor next anding the state's renewable sector through major financial investments and cleaner technologies and utility scale and solar power. at the end of the row we have my colleague david waskow who is director of the wri climate initiative and works to work on the paris agreement and other national arena. the ultimate a-- he's been a log member of the climate activist and worked with oxfam. todd, we'll start with you. how would you assess that the paris agreement has withstood

the test of trump's announcement to withdraw from the paris agreement? where are you seeing signs of leadership and where do you think we still need more progress? >> thanks very much, andrew. thanks to everybody at wri for putting this event on, and a pleasure to be up on the stage with all of my fellow panelists. andrew, i think it's a mixed bag. i think that the first and most important piece of good news, and it wasn't a foregone conclusion, was that other countries stayed in. i think they sort of doubled down in their general determination not to walk away, got to let the united states just to use the president's words not to let the united states cancel the agreement, so that was a very important thing, and president xi from china showed up in davos in january of are i guess 2017 and said right away that china is committed,

staying in, and everybody else has stayed in. so to that extent that's very good news and we shouldn't look past that. by the way, i'm just going to confine my comments right now to the international side. we have several people up here to talk about the domestic side. the less positive part of it is that it's really damaging for the united states to be on the way out. you probably know if you're in this room that we're not actually out yet, that under the agreement the -- we can't literally be withdrawn until november 4th of 2020 which by pure coincidence is the day after the 2020 election, but we can submit a formal notice of withdrawal in 2019 that has to lay over a year so it's 2020 before the u.s. can get out and there's, you know, president in

principle left the door of coming back in, as he said. anyway, we is this announcement that's been made. the president made clear his intention to withdraw. the whole kind of sense of things from the senior levels of the trump administration is to be not interested in climate change and to be not intended to stay in paris, so that has had a very damaging impact, and i've seen it in a couple of ways. by the way, i went to the c.o.p. for several days in november and went to the intercessional meeting just a few weeks ago in bonn and spent three days there, probably meant with 25 countries, and the ldcs and the g-77 and a whole slew of people from every part of the spectrum. so i think there's two things that -- that i think -- two ways that i see the u.s. posture as being undermining and difficult

right now in terms of negotiations, number one there is the negotiations themselves and the second is on -- on broadly speaking the ambition side, but i have a specific point i want to make about ambition. but on the negotiation side, there are a whole number of -- of follow-on steps that are being negotiated this year and meant to be finished this year in poland at the c.o.p. sometimes this is referred to in the press as a rule book but it's a bunch of different guidelines and measures meant to implement provisions of paris and it's really important. there's guidelines for transparency. there's discussions about the kind of information you have to submit when you submit your target. there's accounting and there's compliance and all sorts of things that have to get dealt with, and i think that in the absence of the united states you

have a phenomenon of -- of a fair number of countries that tried to pull back a little bit from some of the things that were agreed to, some of the compromises that were reached in paris. i think that there is generally a sense among many countries, that you know, countries in many cases extended themselves maybe past even the point where they were entirely comfortable, but they saw that this was a big moment. they saw that the united states was walking arm in arm with china, you know, you know, at the presidential level. they understood that there were elements of this thing that needed to be done in such a way nat united states could actually join the agreement which is never a foregone conclusion and people extended themselves. having done that and to turn around in the united states and say never mine, we're gone. that's a very difficult dine mix and i think it is both in my observation and in many times,

in many comments that people, again, from across the spectrum made to me, damaging in terms of finding a way forward on some of these points. with respect to the other -- the other thing i was going to say is that paris -- look, remember, the targets in paris, the so-called ndcs, nationally determined contribution, are not binding. there's a binding transparency and accountability system but not the targets themselves. it had to be -- in my judgment it had to be that way in order to get broad agreement, but it -- but it is a feature of paris, and so if you think, well, how are we going to get the kind of ambition that we need to get over time, there has to be a growing development of norms not just in the negotiating community but in the countries to keep ramping up and ramp up more and more and faster and faster. you see the united states, the

second historic emitter, the second biggest emitter now and the country which for so many years which has been viewed in all areas beyond climate change to use mad line albright's phrase indispensable power and now to say never mind so what are the expectations? obviously not good. countries are in, want to implement the agreement and that's great and don't underestimate the negative side of the u.s. position. >> thanks investment i want to bring in ambassador hart, and david now to sort of launch from this platform that todd has set for us. so where do you think the coalitions that got us the agreements out of paris, full disclosure, i was working with todd and we came together in the high ambition coalition and other initiatives, fair to say we got a much stronger agreement

than many of us thought and really going to get leading into the negotiations which is unusual in these kinds of forums. very difficult. we got over 190 countries. they all got to agree on the same thing to move forward. makes the u.s. senate look pretty easy, 60 out of 100 hand in this forum you need everyone agree to move forward in terms of ambition. where do you think we are in terms of holding that ambition together, ambassador hart, and where do you think we are in terms of the coalition that is really going to move forward in this time when as todd said the u.s. is pretty much on the shrines, at least in the formal negotiations? >> thanks a lot. >> thanks a lot. . first, let me thank wri and my colleague and good friend todd stern. we sat across each other many

long days and nights and. very often opposing each other but we became friends. i want to say what occurred in paris a couple of years ago where despite enormous differences around legal form, around the intricacies of the agreement and necessary approaches to stop this global prop, countries coalesced around a very ambitious agreement. no one got everything that they wanted. we wanted those targets that todd spoke about to be very ambitious and legally binding, and we did not get that, but everyone decided that it was in the best interest not only of their individual countries but the world in general, if we could craft an ambitious global

conference that would come to the global challenge of our time and despite the decision by the u.s. administration to announce the withdrawal from the paris agreement i nevertheless believe that the coalition that delivered the paris agreement remains strong. it was not only a coalition of countries, it was a coalition of civil society actors and really economy actors, and we're seeing an amazing amount of mobilization in the real economy around the goals and aspirations of the paris agreement, and i think that's a very positive sight. for me in my own region, for us climate change is not some esoteric scientific debate or discussion. it's a reality, right? and in 2017 we saw some of the

most devastating and destructive hurricanes that we've ever seen in our entire history so, therefore, when we have these discussions on the paris agreement and take action on climate change it carries life -- lobs of life implications or has loss of life implications so in my own region governments have decided to be even more ambitious than they were going into paris. just last thursday we had a general election in my country where we elect the the first female prime minister in our history, and she has already announced or promised that by 2030 barbados will move towards -- will transition towards being 100% carbon neutral. the first 100% carbon neutral island in the world, and, if you know, anyone who knows her knows

that she will keep that promise. so -- so throughout the caribbean and in other regions you are seeing countries recognize that -- that there are opportunities, real economy opportunities for taking action on climate change show my response to your question is that the coalition remains strong. we want the u.s. to be back at the table and engage in a constructive manner. however, countries are not going to wait until the u.s. resumes its position of leadership. countries are already taking actions to implement or even exceed their paris commitment. however, we need the u.s. back at the table. it is absolutely imperative to have the u.s. at the table. were it not for the leadership of the united states, were it not for the leadership of todd,

though i disagreed with him sometimes, we would not have a paris agreement. i can say that unashamedly, we would not have had this aggressive global agreement were it not for the leadership of the united states, so we absolutely need the u.s. back at the table. >> david, same question. how are we in terms of holding together the coalitions of ambition? are you seeing new signs of leadership and response to what's happened the last year? also, what are the accelerating moments that we should look forward to in terms of what are the signs to look forward to in the next year right after that until we sort of potentially get another realignment in the global politics on this issue? >> thanks. so i think one of the most remarkable things about what's happened during the trump administration or trump era and the response to the withdrawal

announcement or the intent to withdraw announcement by president trump has been the reaction. it was alluded to earlier. when the election happened, many of us were in marrakech for c.o.p. 22 which was happening at the time, and the sense of determination that one felt throughout the halts there was quite remarkable, the sense that countries and beyond countries. it included cities, states, businesses who were there, and civil society. the determination to carry on was -- was palpable, and i think that came through as well in the wake a year ago of the announcement by president trumpch that he intends to withdraw from the agreement. we saw the upwelling of hundreds of companies and states saying that they are still in in the lingo of one of the alliances

built in response. and i think that that has carried on, and -- and that then brings us forward to those next moments that -- that really can carry forward the flag, and i don't want to suggest that we be naive or pollyanna about the situation. the reality of this administration is something that many are keeply aware of around the world. and yet there is this clear determination to carry on. some of the things coming down the pike that i think are those moments that will test that determination are both within negotiations and outside them, the global action action summit coming up in california in september which is meant to highlight actions that cities and states and buses and other actors are taking, but i think will bring a surprising number

of countries to the mix as well and show the ways in which the quote, non-state actors can work together with collaboratists. i think we'll see a potent chilling there. that will then carry us forward to the c.o.p. this year, c.o.p. 24 in poland which todd mentions. and there we are really on the cusp of two major decision points i think. one has to do with the set of rules or guidelines for the paris agreement. the this really should be seen as the mobilizing ingredients, the catalytic ingredients for the paris agreement so not strictures, per se, but how do we really put in place the building fwlooks are going building blocks that are going to allow the paris agreement to have traction on the ground? and countries are determined to get the foundational elements of

that set of guidelines and rule book in place by this have. o.p. there's a lot of work left to be done. there will have to be stepped up pace to get there, and that's the goal that's been established. the second piece for the c.o.p. has to do with ambition, and here we're really in the midst of the first five-year cycle under paris. paris established a series of five-year cycles to increase ambition and strengthen action. this one is perhaps less definitively spelled out in the agreement than some that come after starting in 2025, but nonetheless many countries, and we saw this at the intercessional negotiations in bonn several weeks ago, that made clear that they see this as an important milestone, and so driving toward that objective at the copp and more importantly having a clear sense of direction for increasing action by 2020 is another of those

milestones, and then next year the u.n. secretary general