Carnegie Council Podcasts

In this episode of the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative podcast, Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen and Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal sit down with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation's Stelios Vassilakis for an engaging conversation about how to preserve and empower public space ethics. What we can we learn from the Athenian agora to guide the means and methods of governing AI?

For more, including a full transcript, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Current international responses to climate change continue to place the world on a trajectory beyond 1.5°C global warming, with impacts posing severe risks to natural and human systems. Discussions on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) globally has grown since the publication of the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5°C, which reaffirms that large-scale CDR is required in all of its pathways to limit global warming to 1.5°C, with limited or no overshoot to achieve net-zero mid-century and global net negative emissions thereafter, until the end of the century. By removing between 100 to 1000 billion tonnes of CO2 depending on the speed of emissions reduction in respective pathways.

CDR methods vary and include the use of nature-based approaches, such as afforestation and enhancing wetlands, or engineering-based approaches to directly capture carbon dioxide. At scale, they all present potential benefits and risks of negative side-effects and pose significant governance challenges as many governance gaps exist. Most CDR approaches are currently theoretical and far from being ready to deploy at the speed or scale necessary to prevent overshooting the Paris Agreement temperature goal of 1.5–2°C.

Discussions around CDR governance, in particular on and around nature-based approaches to CDR as well as direct air carbon capture and storage, have more recently gained growing interest in light of the wave of net-zero commitments or pledges by governments, companies and other actors over the last two years.

However, important knowledge gaps persist around the role CDR could play in achieving net negative emissions after net-zero to deliver the Paris Agreement's goal. This C2GDiscuss features three global experts sharing their views on the role that CDR could play to achieve net negative after net zero. Some of the topics explored in this discussion are: what needs to be done now to have CDR functioning by the time we need it; how can CDR's full potential be realized as a climate response while making sure that the co-benefits are maximized, and trade-offs minimized in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); what role could the public and private sector play to scale up the required CDR and is there a role for other non-state actors.

Understanding these issues is crucial and urgent for meaningful societal deliberations and decisions today.

Jan Minx is head of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change working group Applied Sustainability Science.

James Mwangi is the executive director of the Dalberg Group, and a partner with Dalberg Advisors.

Shuchi Talati is chief of staff for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Janos Pasztor (moderator) is executive director of C2G and a senior fellow at Carnegie Council.

This discussion was recorded on September 8, 2021, and is available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français.

For more, please go to C2G's website.

A decade after hacktivists like the Anonymous collective gained notoriety for cyberattacks on U.S. government agencies and multinationals and were later tamped down by arrests, a second wave of hacktivists is rising. Joseph Marks, cybersecurity reporter at The Washington Post, speaks with Doorstep co-host Tatiana Serafin about the differences and overlap between hacktivism, cyberwarfare, and ransomware and how these tools are being deployed in the Russia/Ukraine conflict and beyond.

For more, go to carnegiecouncil.org.

The oceans and climate change are inextricably connected. On the one hand, the oceans are faced with significant threats posed by climate change through acidification, loss of oxygen, and warming; on the other hand, the oceans play a critical role in regulating the climate system, acting as a major heat and carbon sink, and have been increasingly regarded as a source of solutions to climate change.

A range of additional ocean-based climate-altering approaches are being explored to limit climate impacts. For example, introducing additional nutrients to enhance photosynthesis of plankton to remove CO2 from the ocean surface and transport it to the deep ocean; cultivating large-scale seaweed to capture carbon through photosynthesis for sequestration; and brightening marine clouds through spraying sea water to deliver cooling locally.

However, all these approaches may present potential benefits and risks. What do the ocean protection community and the climate protection community say about these approaches? Is there a panacea for addressing the major environmental and socio-political challenges that these approaches pose? How can their risks and benefits be weighed up against the expected impacts of climate change?

In this C2GDiscuss, three experts share their views on these approaches.

Stefanos Fotiou is director in the Office of Sustainable Development Goals in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. At the time of this recording, he was the director of the Environment and Development Division in the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP).

Kristina M. Gjerde is is senior high seas advisor to IUCN's Global Marine and Polar Programme (GMPP) and adjunct professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, where she teaches international marine law.

Joyashree Roy is the inaugural Bangabandhu Chair Professor at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT).

Janos Pasztor (moderator) is executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G).

This interview was recorded on June 1, 2021, and is also available with interpretation into 中文, Español, and Français.

For more, please go to C2G's website.

Over the past year, America has imported more oil from Russia and goods from China to address domestic inflation and supply chain issues. Abroad, the U.S. is threatening sanctions against Russia and keeping diplomats from attending the Beijing Olympics. Center for a New American Security's Rachel Ziemba joins Doorstep co-hosts Nick Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin to discuss the tensions between U.S. domestic and foreign policy goals and how an impending global growth crisis may upend the Biden/Harris administration's "foreign policy for the middle class."

For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

Last October, millions of leaked documents known as the Pandora Papers exposed the shadowy financial structures global power players from politicians to billionaires use to hide money, move markets, and transform countries. Author Casey Michel delves deep into the underbelly of this global scheming in American Kleptocracy. In this virtual event, Michel and Doorstep co-hosts Nikolas Gvosdev and Tatiana Serafin discuss corruption in the United States and its effects around the world.

For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is required in all pathways to keep global warming under 1.5°C. A range of approaches to CDR are under consideration, including technological or biological approaches, with the latter being increasingly referred to as "nature-based solutions."

Afforestation and reforestation, together with other nature-based approaches to CDR, have been gaining international attraction because of their huge potential to remove carbon from atmosphere but also due to the other prospective environmental and social benefits they could bring. However, there are concerns raised around "moral hazard," competition for resources, permanence of sequestration, and other potential risks of deployment of large-scale afforestation and reforestation, which pose governance challenges.

How do we address these challenges and make decisions that maximize synergies and co-benefits and minimize tradeoffs? What can we learn from previous large-scale afforestation and reforestation initiatives?

To explore these questions, C2G brought together a diverse group of policy, intergovernmental, independent research organization, NGO, and academic experts for a "C2GDiscuss" podcast on July 20, 2020.

Featuring:

• Li Fang, chief representative, World Resources Institute Beijing Representative Office, China
• Martin Frick, deputy to the special envoy, UN Food Systems Summit 2021
• Thelma Krug, senior researcher (retired) at National Institute for Space Research, Brazil and vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• Kelsey Perlman (speaking on behalf of CAN International), forest and climate campaigner, Fern
• Artur Runge-Metzger, director for climate strategy, governance, and emissions from non-trading sectors, DG CLIMA, European Commission
• Janos Pasztor, executive director, C2G (Moderator)

For more, please go to C2G's website.

Are we reaching for the wrong metaphors and narratives in our eagerness to govern AI? In this Artificial Intelligence & Equality podcast, Carnegie Council Senior Fellow Anja Kaspersen is joined by Google Research's Blaise Aguera y Arcas. In a talk that spans from Gutenberg to federated learning models to what we can learn from nuclear research, they discuss what we need to be mindful of when discussing and engaging with future applications of machine intelligence.

For more on this podcast, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.

For more on the Artificial Intelligence & Equality Initiative (AIEI), please go to carnegieaie.org.

In response to climate change risks, scientists are considering the viability of developing and deploying marine cloud brightening (MCB), which seeks to whiten clouds over the ocean to reflect solar radiation back into space in order to achieve cooling. MCB is still largely theoretical, but if ever deployed at scale, could create large and potentially long-term risks and governance challenges.

The recent first outdoor MCB experiment conducted by Australian scientists went largely unnoticed by the general public and has generated some interesting but limited debate. In this C2GDiscuss, the panelists explore:

• How to situate MCB in the global challenges of response to climate risks context?
• What is the latest research and debate about MCB as well as the governance implications of potential deployment?
• What could we learn from the recent MCB outdoor experiment in Australia to move forward the governance of solar radiation modification research?

The C2GDiscuss features:

• Kerryn Brent, lecturer at the University of Adelaide and member of the Australian Forum for Climate Intervention Governance;
• Silvia Ribeiro, Latin America Director, ETC Group;
• Phillip Williamson, Honorary Reader, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
• Paul Rouse, Science Advisor, C2G (Moderator)

For more, please go to C2G's website.

C2GDiscuss is a series of moderated in-depth conversations between diverse experts on some of the governance challenges of climate-altering approaches. In this podcast, Mark Turner, communications consultant at C2G, interviews Janos Pasztor, C2G's executive director, about how how these discussions encourage an engaging conversation about some of the toughest questions faced by decision-makers on climate change, now and in the future.

C2GDisccuss and C2GTalk are posted on Monday on Carnegie Council's podcast channels.

For more, please go to C2G's website.