The Paris Agreement, Five Years Later

This special edition of The World Today will kick off Penn Climate Week with a discussion of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, five years after its adoption. The most ambitious global climate accord in history, the Paris Agreement aimed to limit global temperature rise to below 2° Celsius and pursue efforts to limit the rise to 1.5°C.

Both negotiators and activists acknowledge the agreement is far from perfect, but it has still had an impact. How has the Paris Agreement contributed to emission reduction so far? Where does the global community go from here, and what can climate organizations do to encourage more aggressive climate action? Will the COVID-19 pandemic be a catalyst for the world to embrace extreme changes in response to climate change?

Join us for this virtual edition of The World Today, as Sue Biniaz—a Perry World House Visiting Fellow this year and the lead American negotiator of the Paris Agreement—discusses her experiences in Paris and how the global community must address the climate crisis in conversation with PWH Senior Faculty Fellow Michael Weisberg.

Speakers

Susan Biniaz

Visiting Fellow Perry World House

Susan Biniaz, a former Deputy Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department, was the lead climate lawyer and a climate negotiator for the U.S. government from 1989 to early 2017. She worked on a wide variety of other subjects during her time at the State Department, including legal issues related to U.S. treaty practice, outer space, law of the sea, the environment, Somali piracy, the Middle East, Europe, the Western Hemisphere, law enforcement, human rights, and private international law. Since leaving the government, she has taught international law courses at Columbia, the University of Chicago, and Yale. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the UN Foundation, a Senior Advisor at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Climate Advisers.

Moderator

Michael Weisberg

Bess W. Heyman President's Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Deputy Director of Perry World House School of Arts and Sciences

A climate diplomat, philosopher of science, climate policy researcher, and experienced academic leader, he has worked to negotiate and achieve collective outcomes in the complex landscape of climate, ocean, and development issues at the highest levels of international diplomacy.

An expert on the climate needs of small island developing states, Weisberg currently serves as senior advisor to Jamaica's Permanent Representative to the United Nations and as an advisor to the Fiji and Palau negotiating teams at COP. Weisberg was a leading voice in the development of the "mosaic of solutions" for addressing loss and damage due to the adverse impacts of climate change, which led to major breakthroughs on the topic at COP27 and COP28. This framework was developed in collaboration with the Maldivian Government and the International Peace Institute, where he is a Non-resident Senior Advisor.

Weisberg serves as editor-in-chief of Biology and Philosophy and director of the Galápagos Education and Research Alliance. He is the author of Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World, co-author of the landmark photographic study Galápagos: Life in Motion, and a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.