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Panel: How can we get to "net zero" to fight climate change?

On September 16, GZERO Media — in partnership with Microsoft and Eurasia Group — gathered global experts on climate and sustainability to address the future of "net zero" in a livestream panel.

Our panel for the discussion on Net Zero: Climate Ambition and Action included:

  • Julia Pyper, host and producer of the Political Climate podcast (moderator)
  • Gerald Butts, Vice Chairman & Senior Advisor, Eurasia Group
  • Lucas Joppa, Chief Environmental Officer, Microsoft
  • Rachel Kyte, Dean of The Fletcher School, Tufts University
  • Mark Carney, Finance Adviser to the UK Prime Minister for COP 26 and UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance

Select quotes from our panelists:


Gerald Butts on public-private collaboration on climate change

We can't be in opposing ditches throwing rotten tomatoes at each other about how to make progress on this problem. You're going to make a lot more progress, a lot more quickly, if large private sector actors are acting in concert with the UN and major governments around the world.

Lucas Joppa on fighting climate change amid COVID-19 recovery

We're recovering from an event, and if we don't take a more proactive offensive strategy to our engagement with climate change, then the number of things that we are going to have to recover from is just going to accelerate out of control.

Rachel Kyte on the new opportunity for net zero

The economic recession ... has knocked everybody back. We have to dress ourselves down, stare at this problem and work out how we are going to achieve two core goals: deeply decarbonize ... and use the opportunity to make recovery that works better for everybody.

Mark Carney on corporate ambitions to go net zero

As companies have plans, it becomes more and more obvious what problems need to be solved, and what technologies need to go from uneconomic to economic. A problem [turns into] a huge opportunity if the world's doing what everyone's saying they're going to do, which is to go to net zero — and that is a powerful dynamic.

This event was the first in a four-part livestream panel series about key issues facing the 75th United General Assembly. The next discussion, Crisis Response & Recovery: Reimagining while Rebuilding, will stream live on Wednesday, September 23, at 11 am ET and will include Microsoft President Brad Smith, and Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media.

See the schedule of upcoming events and watch our livestream panels here, and check out GZERO Media's special coverage of the 2020 edition of the world's largest diplomatic gathering, and the first ever virtual UNGA.

More from Global Stage

Staving off default: How unsustainable debt is threatening human progress

Three-fifths of the world's lowest income countries are debt distressed and in danger of default. Navid Hanif, assistant secretary-general for economic development at the United Nations, tells GZERO's Tony Maciulis that we need to make debt more sustainable by restructuring it and that multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, should offer affordable longer-term loans with lower interest rates to allow least developed countries better opportunities to deal with crises like climate change, poverty, and educating children.

The world "is more coupled than we think"

Rania Al-Mashat, the Egyptian Minister of International Cooperation, tells GZERO's Tony Maciulis that the pandemic taught us how interconnected we truly are; no one nation can solve a problem as big as climate change, food insecurity, or geopolitical strife on its own. Al-Mashat makes a case for looking beyond the short term problems of inflation and toward longer-term solutions for the most pressing issues of our time.

AI at the tipping point: danger to information, promise for creativity

Artificial intelligence is on everyone's mind these days. The potential for AI to mess up democracy is scary, but the truth is that it can also make the world a better place. So, are bots good or bad for us? We asked a few experts to weigh in during the Global Stage livestream conversation "Risks and Rewards of AI," hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft at this year's World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

World faces "lost decade" of economic growth, says World Bank economist

The World Bank predicts that the global economy now faces a decade of lost growth, in part due to an older workforce and lower productivity. Is the way out of the looming doldrums to have a young population like Nigeria? Yes, but those countries will need help from wealthy nations to invest in things like education to reap the benefits of their demographic dividend, World Bank deputy chief economist Ayhan Kose tells GZERO's Tony Maciulis at the World Bank/IMF spring meetings in Washington, DC.

Is there a path ahead for peace in Ukraine?

As we approach the grim first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – which came on the heels of last year’s Munich Security Conference – GZERO is back in Germany, discussing the past year since the war began, what’s likely to come next, and what it means for the world.

Ian Bremmer: The West is united on Russian energy, the rest of the world is not

With talk at this year’s Munich Security Conference from most of the world’s most powerful countries about decoupling from Russian energy, it can be easy to forget that most of the world’s population has other priorities. “What we're seeing is that a majority of the world's economic strength and certainly military strength really wants to put Russia back in a box, but a majority of the world's population does not,” said Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer during a Global Stage livestream conversation.

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