Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in.

My guest for this episode is Liz Beardsley, senior policy counsel for the U.S. Green Building Council. I spoke to Beardsley shortly after her return from COP30, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held last month in Belém, Brazil.

Each year, nearly 200 countries participate in COP, or Conference of the Parties, to negotiate international treaties, assess progress on previous treaties, especially the Paris agreement, and develop strategies for reducing emissions and strengthening resilience. The U.S. did not send a negotiating delegate this year, and there was no U.S. pavilion. But subnational representatives and the private sector made a strong showing, according to Beardsley.

Resilience was a key focus at the conference along with emissions reduction, Beardsley said. While there has been a significant downcurve in emissions globally, the world is already at 1.2 or 1.3 degrees Celsius, and current Nationally Determined Contributions are not enough to maintain global warming to the Paris agreement's 1.5 degree Celsius target.

"We understand that we need to do more faster," Beardsley said. "That was the focus. It was really on scaling and doing more, not doing less."

Here are some of the topics our conversation covered:

• (1:34) What is COP?
• (6:15) The U.S. presence at COP
• (12:38) Buildings on the global stage
• (18:49) Near-zero buildings defined
• (21:54) The emphasis on resilience
• (27:19) Why fossil fuels are hard to eliminate
• (28:46) Big takeaways