Whatever it takes – is there a Plan B For climate change?

Plan A for climate change should be to change our growth model to reduce emissions sufficiently to stop global warming through a mixture of carbon pricing, regulation, and technology subsidies. Should we also consider a Plan B of encouraging new technological solutions? And if so, what kind of solutions are there and how would we act upon them? This event brings together some new thinking on this issue.

Meet our speakers and chair

Clare Balboni is Assistant Professor of Environmental Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an alumnus of LSE.

Robin Burgess is Director of the IGC and a Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lord Deben is Chair of the UK Climate Change Committee. He was the UK’s longest-serving Secretary of State for the Environment (1993 to 1997). He has held several other high-level ministerial posts, including Secretary of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1989 to 1993).

David Keith (@DKeithClimate) is Professor of Applied Physics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and founder of Carbon Engineering, a company developing technology to capture CO2 from ambient air to make carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuels. He has worked near the interface between climate science, energy technology, and public policy for twenty-five years.

David King (@Sir_David_King) was the permanent Special Representative for Climate Change from September 2013 until March 2017. Sir David was previously the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 to 2007, during which time he raised awareness of the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the Energy Technologies Institute.

Anna Valero (@asvalero) is a Senior Policy Fellow at LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance, Deputy Director of the Programme on Innovation and Diffusion (POID) and an Associate of the Grantham Research Institute. She completed an ESRC Innovation Fellowship in 2021, obtained a PhD in Economics at LSE in 2018, and was a Research Director for the LSE Growth Commission in 2017. Previously, Anna was a Manager at Deloitte’s Economic Consulting practice where she qualified as an ACA.

Elizabeth Robinson (@EJZRobinson66) is Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and a Professorial Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

More about this event

Minouche Shafik, Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science and Robin Burgess, co-chair of the organising committee of LSE Environment Week will deliver welcoming remarks at the event.

During LSE Environment Week we are using economics to address the climate crisis in a series of events convened by the Department of Economics (@LSEEcon), the Economics of Environment and Energy Programme (EEE), the International Growth Centre (@The_IGC) and the Programme on Innovation and Diffusion (@POID_LSE).

Twitter Hashtag for this event: #LSEEnvironment