Summerupperers, it’s our birrrrtthday and we want to say a giant THANK YOU for listening this past year we’ve been in your ears! You're the reason we started this crazy podcasting adventure - we wanted to create a supportive space for all the climate professionals out there who pour so much of themselves into their work and passion for climate action, and it’s been a genuine delight to meet many of you in person at the various goings on since we launched the pod.

Now down to business in Bonn. Specifically, the Bonn Climate Conference, an important milestone in the lead up to COP28 to be hosted in the UAE later this year. What happened there? Arguments abounded on the agenda for COP28, from climate finance redux to concern over a lack of further ambition on mitigation efforts. And there was the pushback against COP28 President Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber for running an oil company, and THEN there was pushback to the pushback when said President voiced language about “phase down of unabated fossil fuels” being inevitable!

This week’s deep dive delves into the depths of DISCOUNT RATES! A compact but dense and chewy delight,‘Discounting the Distant Future: A Critique of the EPA’s Analysis of the Social Cost of Carbon’, is brought to us by Geoffrey M. Heal, Noah Kaufman and Antony Millner at Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy. This paper had your intrepid hosts debating the merits of descriptive vs ethical approaches and let’s just say there are no easy answers but plenty of numbers. 

If this paper piques your interest, Episode 6 in our back catalogue, ‘An orange, a picture of an apple and a mandarine shaped eraser’: Critiquing Integrated Assessment Models’ is a doozy.

Frankie’s One More Thing is to alert you to the many brilliant and freely available talks from philosopher Michael Sandel (quoted in this week’s paper) including this BBC special on Should the Rich World Pay for Climate Change?, his first year Harvard course Justice, and this great talk on the moral limit of markets.

Tennant’s One More Thing is the slamming of a paper on the impact of the EU CBAM on Africa. Tennant really, really didn’t like this paper. So much so that he was driven to engage in the brave, new (for one T Reed) world of LinkedIn to write a blistering takedown of said paper. This is NOT the one his cat deleted.

Luke’s One More Thing is a plug for the latest from irreverent Aussie energy newsletter Currently Speaking on a very important issue occupying the minds of many (any?) climate aficionados. That is, how DO you pronounce AEMO? Read their exclusive investigation here.

And that’s all from us this week Summerupperers! We shall see you next time and until then, please keep tweeting your thoughts to us at @LukeMenzel, @TennantReed and @FrankieMuskovic and if you would like to weave some golden threads through our back catalogue, give us your feelpinions or suggest papers to read we are always here for that - hit us up at [email protected].