VIDEO Public lecture | We'll always have Paris: COP21 and the new political economy of climate change

Grantham Research Institute public lecture by Michael Jacobs, Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute

Introduced and chaired by Professor Sam Fankhauser

The Paris Climate Change Agreement, achieved at the UN COP21 Conference in December, is the first legally-binding agreement on climate change since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

Michael Jacobs worked closely with the French Government and various international organisations in the political process leading up to the conference, having previously been adviser to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the failed UN conference in Copenhagen in 2009.

In this lecture he explored both the causes and the consequences of the Paris Agreement. Why and how was it achieved, where Copenhagen failed? What does the Agreement actually mean? And will it work?  Examining the relationships between the economics of action on climate change, the politics of climate in Europe, the US, China and elsewhere, and the complex international relations of the UN negotiations, the lecture asked: does the Agreement mark a historic turning point in the world’s efforts to combat global warming, or merely another empty set of promises?

Question & Answer Panel

The lecture was followed by a question & answer session with contributions from Dr Robert Falkner and Dr Alina Averchenkova in addition to the speaker and chair.

Suggested hashtag for this event for Twitter users: #LSECOP21