Boston Carbon Risk Forum
The Carbon Risk Forum will bring together city and state government leaders, financial professionals, and leaders of organizations concerned about carbon risk in their investments. We are faced with growing evidence of the risk inherent in fossil fuel investments – it’s time to responsibly move to more sustainable, safer, investments. In the last year, over 30 local governments have moved to divest from fossil fuels, and we hope you will join us for an in-depth examination of the issues and a discussion of what institutions can do to lower their carbon risk. Addressing carbon risk by divesting is financially, morally, and politically prudent. This is a growing movement and we must now map out the path forward for responsibly moving our assets into more sustainable investments. The Forum will provide a unique opportunity for local governments and the institutional financial sector to interface on the components and implications of fossil fuel divestment. The Forum will build off of the successful Seattle Divestment Forum.
Agenda8:00am Breakfast and Registration
8:30am Welcome and Introduction- The Reverend Doctor Robert Massie
- Moderator: Councilor Leland Cheung
- Mark Campanale, Carbon Tracker Initiative
- Mark Lewis, Kepler Cheuvreux
- Moderator: District Attorney Sam Sutter
10:00 – 10:15am Break
10:15 – 12:00pm Divestment as a Response- Stuart Braman, Fossil Free Indexes
- John Fisher, Bloomberg LP
- Bevis Longstreth, Corporate Finance Lawyer and Professor
- Leslie Samuelrich, Green Century Funds
- Moderator: Councilor Seth Yurdin
- Mayor Joseph Curtatone, Somerville MA
- Moderator: Representative Marjorie Decker
- Thomas Kuh, MSCI
- Liz Michaels, Aperio Group
- Moderator: Councilor Michelle Wu
2:30 – 2:45pm Break
2:45 – 3:45pm Divestment Case Study- Donald P. Gould, Pitzer College Board of Trustees
- Eric Becker, Sterling College Board of Trustees
- Dan Curran, President, University of Dayton
- Moderator: Stu Dalheim, Calvert Investments
- Getting Pension Boards to Yes – Stephanie Leighton, Trillium Asset Management
- Divestment or Engagement – Leslie Samuelrich, Green Century Fund
- Maximizing the Political Benefit of Divesting – Mike McGinn, Former Seattle Mayor
- Reinvestment Possibilities – Ken Locklin, IMPAX, Karina Funk, Brown Advisory
- State-level Divestment – Rep. Marjorie Decker, Rep. Aaron Michlewitz
- City-level Divestment – Councilor Seth Yurdin
4:45 – 5:00pm Closing
5:00 – 6:00pm Reception
Climate and Food Justice Forum: Building Connections between New York and Puerto Rico
The National Young Farmers Coalition, La Sombrilla, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and NRDC Present
Climate and Food Justice Forum: Building Connections between New York and Puerto Rico
New York and Puerto Rico are home to some of the most climate vulnerable communities in the United States. Advocates and residents in both regions increasingly see food justice as critical to bolstering their communities’ resiliency in the face of climate change. The forum will explore that connection, highlighting how farmers and activists in both regions are developing climate smart alternatives to conventional agriculture.
Speakers include:
Cindy Madeleiny Camacho Bernard Estudiantes Dispuestos a la Restauración Ambiental
Annie Courtens Roxbury Farm
Keisha Morale Rodríguez Estudiantes Dispuestos a la Restauración Ambiental
Ana Elisa Pérez Quintero Proyecto Enlace
Colibrí Sanfiorenzo-Barnhard La Sombrilla
Columbia Law School 435 W 116th St Jerome Greene Hall, Room 107 New York, NY 10027
People's Climate Justice Summit
The Climate Justice Alliance, together with our friends and allies, is hosting the People’s Climate Justice Summit, featuring the voices, strategies, and solutions of climate-affected communities around the world.
On September 23, political and corporate leaders will meet at the United Nations in New York City for Climate Summit 2014. This summit represents yet another step towards the corporate takeover of the UN climate negotiations and the privatization of land, water, and air resources under the guise of a global climate compact. The climate crisis is a symptom of a deeper problem: an economy based on extraction and exploitation of resources and people. This economy benefits a few at the expense of communities and the planet.
While heads of state meet at the UN, communities across the country are united for a just transition away from an economy based on fossil fuel extraction and other dirty industries, and towards clean community energy, zero waste, public transit, local food systems and housing for all.
Schedule:
Church Center for the United Nations, 777 1st Ave at E. 44th St
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
PEOPLES TRIBUNAL- Dr. Robert Bullard, Dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University
- Lisa Garcia, Friends of the Earth
- Jeremy Brecher, Labor Network for Sustainability
- Rex Varona, Global Coalition on Migration
- Rosa Guillen, World March of Women
- Julia Olson, Our Children’s Trust
Hear hard-hitting testimonies from affected peoples around the globe as we indict political leaders and corporate polluters for their failure to protect our health, communities and planet. We will hear from those living with the real and immediate impacts of climate change and people living on the frontlines of extractive industries that are contributing to climate change.
Opening- Julia Beatty, Center for Social Inclusion
10:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Climate Change: Place-based Experiences, Impacts/Adaptation/Migration
- Laquan Thomas/Andres Felipe Hernandez, Ironbound Community Corporation (United States)
- Cynthia Moices, UPROSE (United States)
- Beryl Thurman, North Shore Waterfront Conservancy – Staten Island (United States)
- Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Earth Guardians (United States)
- Mamadou Goita, Institute for Research and the Promotion of Alternatives in Development, (Mali)
- Antolin Huáscar Flores, Confederación Nacional Agraria (Peru)
- Representative, Black Urban Growers (United States)
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Corporate Root Causes to Climate Change
- Patricia Gualinga Montalvo, Kichwa leader, Sarayaku, Ecuadorian Amazon (Ecuador)
- Jihan Gearon, Black Mesa Water Coalition (United States)
- Kelsey Julian, Our Children’s Trust (United States)
- Katherine Eglund, NAACP Gulf Port Chapter (United States)
- Venancia Cruz Jimenez, Movimiento Indígena Santiago de Anaya (México)
- Alex Cardoso, Movement of Recyclers/Catadores – MNCR (Brazil)
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
The People Face the Tribunal- Statements and Decision by Judges- Damaris Reyes, Good Old Lower East Side (United States)
- Miriam Miranda, Organizacion Fraternal Negra Hondurena – OFRANEH (Honduras)
- Stanley Sturgill, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (United States)
- Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Cree, Greenpeace (Canada)
- Mithika Mwende, Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, Kenya (Nigeria)
New School, Alvin Johnson / J.M. Kaplan Hall Auditorium, 66 West 12th St
9:00 AM – 11:30 AM
TOWARDS LIVING ECONOMIES 1: SYSTEMS ALTERNATIVES
Speakers:- Casey Camp, Ponca Tribe (United States)
- Michael Leon Guerrero, Climate Justice Alliance Our Power Campaign (United States)
- Lidy Nacpil, Jubilee South Asia Pacific on Debt and Development (Philippines)
- Sandra Van Niekerk, Public Services International (South Africa)
Moderator:
Juliet Rousseau, Bizi, Alternatibas Process (France).
In the face of climate change, communities everywhere are experimenting with new and time-tested approaches to energy, waste, transit, and the provision of peoples’ needs that protect people and the planet. But to counter the systemic causes of the climate crisis and meet the scale of the problem, movement forces are also developing bold proposals for systemic alternatives. Join us for an exploration of new economic, organizing and worker-centered models that could help us all weather the storm as we build the next economy together.
12:30 PM – 2:30 PM
TOWARDS LIVING ECONOMIES 2: JUST TRANSITION STRATEGIES
Speakers:- Al Weinrub, Local Clean Energy Alliance (United States)
- Monica Wilson, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (United States)
- Juan Camilo Osorio, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (United States),
- Beth Grimsberg (Brazil)
- Rosa Miranda, Bus Riders Union (United States)
Confronting the climate crisis effectively – and building a climate movement strong enough to do so – will require us to take on the social, economic, and political inequities that have allowed the dirty energy economy to persist. And we must address these issues with a particular lens focused on how these systems have led to communities of color and low-income communities bearing the brunt of climate impacts. While we fight against the old energy economy rooted in inequity, we must continue to build a better and stronger vision that can both can work for all of us and is led by communities most marginalized and impacted by climate change. This requires a just transition from the old to the new. A transition into a new economy rooted in the foundation of racial and social justice, invested in people and the planet, and on that is regenerative and life giving. To do so, we must begin to think intersectionally and build cross-sectoral alliances for making change.
From transit to energy, in this panel and conversation, participants will learn from people who are envisioning a just transition and building towards a more sustainable and just future.
UN Climate Summit
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is hosting the Climate Summit to engage leaders and advance climate action and ambition. The Summit will serve as a public platform for leaders at the highest level – all UN Member States, as well as finance, business, civil society and local leaders from public and private sectors – to catalyze ambitious action on the ground to reduce emissions and strengthen climate resilience and mobilize political will for an ambitious global agreement by 2015 that limits the world to a less than 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperature.
The Climate Summit will be about action and solutions that are focused on accelerating progress in areas that can significantly contribute to reducing emissions and strengthening resilience – such as agriculture, cities, energy, financing, forests, pollutants, resilience and transportation.
The Summit is not part of the UNFCCC negotiating process. By promoting climate action, it aims to show that leaders across sectors and at all levels are taking action, thus expanding the reach of what is possible today, in 2015, and beyond.
8:00 – 8:30 Opening Ceremony General Assembly Hall
8:45 – 12:30 National Action & Ambition Announcements, Heads of State and Government
12:45 – 13:15 Joint conclusion of the morning National Action and Ambition Announcements General Assembly Hall
13:30 – 15:15 Private Sector Forum High-level Luncheon Delegates Dining Room
15:30 – 18:30| National Action & Ambition Announcements, Ministers Conference Rooms 1 & 2 | Multilateral and Multi-stakeholder Action Announcements
|
Thematic
Discussions
|
18:45 – 19:15 Closing Ceremony General Assembly Hall
All proceedings will be broadcast live on http://webtv.un.org
There will be multiple press briefings throughout the day in room S-237. Additional stakeout locations will be available inside the premises.
UN social media accounts: http://www.un.org/social/
You can also follow the conversation with the hash tag #climate2014
Our Generation’s Greatest Challenge: Winning the Race to a Clean Energy Future
A private, off-site dinner sponsored by NRG Energy.
By inspiring consumers to be passionate about how we use and produce energy, we can spur a consumer-led movement that compels a clean energy future. Through collaboration and solutions driven by a shared purpose, we can create positive environmental and economic outcomes unprecedented in scale and ambition—securing the futures of people, the economy, and the planet. Challenged to shift our mindsets toward achieving this goal through creative cooperation at last year’s Annual Meeting, this dinner will bring together corporate leaders to accelerate the race to a clean energy future and fight our generation’s greatest challenge: climate change.
PARTICIPANTS:
- David Crane, President and CEO, NRG Energy, Inc.
- Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and Founder, X PRIZE Foundation
Feeding 9 Billion, Together: Sustainable Food Production in a Changing Climate
A private, off-site dinner sponsored by Monsanto.
Over the next 50 years, societies around the world will have to generate more food than they did in the past 10,000 years combined in order to meet the needs of the growing global population. And this food will need to be produced in ever-evolving environments that are facing some serious challenges, from extreme weather to the availability and sustainability of natural resources. No single entity can solve these issues alone, and it is imperative for farmers, corporations, NGOs, and government agencies to work together to develop creative solutions. This dinner will feature a compelling panel discussion exploring ways to improve sustainable food production in the face of climate change, population growth, and resource constraints.
REMARKS:
Hugh Grant, Chairman and CEO, Monsanto Company
MODERATOR:
Marc Gunther, Editor-at-Large, Guardian Sustainable Business US
PARTICIPANTS:
- Robb Fraley, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Monsanto Company
- Peter Seligmann, Chairman and CEO, Conservation International Foundation
Carbon Pricing and the 2015 Climate Agreement
A Symposium in Preparation for the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit 2014
Emissions markets are already operational from Europe to California to China, and many countries are likely to include market programs in pledges for the new international climate agreement in Paris in 2015. Over 60 countries and regions are currently using or seriously considering carbon markets and pricing instruments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent World Bank report.
This panoply of actions is laudable, but it presents challenges for business if systems are disparate and disconnected. How can international policy encourage market systems to grow, mature, and link together? How might emerging systems fit together in a coherent system that enables large-scale change fueled by major investment in new technology? And what does the 2015 agreement need to do to facilitate, rather than impede international linkage?
The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements is leading new research into international market architecture for the Paris 2015 Agreement, in collaboration with the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). This research is focused on policy linkage as a potentially important element of an emerging bottom-up international system to address climate change—linkage not only between emissions-trading systems (ETSs), but among ETSs, tax systems, and non-market regulatory systems (“heterogeneous linkage”). The research is highly relevant to the ongoing UNFCCC negotiations.
3:00 Welcome and Introductions
- Dirk Forrister, President and CEO, IETA
3:10 Pricing Carbon: Trends and Lessons from California, China, and Europe
- Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action
- Mary D. Nichols, Chairman, California Air Resources Board
- Joseph Martens, Commssioner of the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation
- Tang Jie, Vice Mayor of Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China
- Amber Rudd, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Climate Change, United Kingdom
3:50 Carbon Pricing, Linkage, and the 2015 Agreement
- Robert Stavins, Director, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements
The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and IETA will release an Executive Summary of a paper on this topic that will released prior to COP 20 in Lima, Peru.
4:10 What are the essentials for markets in the 2015 Agreement?
- Amy Ericson, US President, Alstom
- Steve Lennon, Group Executive Sustainability, Eskom
- Jim Rogers, Former CEO, Duke Energy*
- Anna Lindstedt, Ambassador for Climate Change, Sweden
- Anne Chassagnette, Director for Environment and Social Responsibility, GDF Suez
- Ted Roosevelt, Managing Director, Barclays
- David Hone, Chief Climate Change Advisor, Shell
- Nat Keohane, Vice President-International Climate, Environmental Defense Fund
CEOs and senior executives from major industries will discuss their views on carbon pricing, how pricing policies have affected their businesses – and what they hope to see in future domestic and international climate policies. The companies will release Statements highlighting their views.
4:40 Discussion
Government officials and representatives of the private sector will take questions from the audience.
Open to the Media.
The Harvard Club of New York City
27 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)
#FloodWallStreet
Wear Blue.
As world leaders meet in New York for a historic summit on climate change, communities across the globe will flood financial centers to confront the corporate and economic systems that are causing the climate crisis.
Join a united global movement to attack the root causes of the climate crisis and build an economy based on justice and sustainability. We need climate justice. Take action in solidarity with communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis for a day of:
Massive Coordinated Direct Actions Against Climate Profiteers.
9:00am – Gather at Battery Park for Breakfast and Music from Rude Mechanical Orchestra
9:30am – Speakers including frontline community leaders of the Climate Justice Alliance, Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, and Chris Hedges
11:00am – Non-violent Direct Action Training and March
12:00pm – Flood Wall Street and Mass Sit-in at the New York Stock Exchange
People's Climate Justice Summit
The Climate Justice Alliance, together with our friends and allies, is hosting the People’s Climate Justice Summit, featuring the voices, strategies, and solutions of climate-affected communities around the world.
On September 23, political and corporate leaders will meet at the United Nations in New York City for Climate Summit 2014. This summit represents yet another step towards the corporate takeover of the UN climate negotiations and the privatization of land, water, and air resources under the guise of a global climate compact. The climate crisis is a symptom of a deeper problem: an economy based on extraction and exploitation of resources and people. This economy benefits a few at the expense of communities and the planet.
While heads of state meet at the UN, communities across the country are united for a just transition away from an economy based on fossil fuel extraction and other dirty industries, and towards clean community energy, zero waste, public transit, local food systems and housing for all.
Schedule:
People's Climate March
The People’s Climate March is scheduled for Sunday, September 21, just two days before world leaders attend an important Climate Summit at the United Nations. President Obama and many of the world’s presidents and prime ministers are expected to attend.
The People’s Climate March will be the largest single march on climate change in world history and the first major street protest of Mayor DeBlasio’s administration.
More than, 1,100 organizations have endorsed the march, ranging from the NAACP to SEIU, the second largest labor union in the country and the largest in New York, to Hurricane Sandy survivors and Maine fisherman joining the march by boat.
The march will begin at Columbus Circle, proceed over on 59th Street to 6th Avenue, down 6th Avenue to 42nd Street, then right on 42nd Street to 11th Avenue. The route passes by some of New York City’s most famous landmarks, from Rockefeller Center to Times Square.
Simultaneous events are planned in dozens of countries around the world, with major marches in London, Berlin, Paris, Delhi and beyond.
March Route & Climate Alarm
11:30 am – March Begins
Location: Marchers will assemble on Central Park West, between 65th and 86th streets.
Description: See here for more on the march lineup
1:00 pm—Mass Alarm Action Coinciding with Church’s Ringing Bells
Location: Throughout the entire march
Description: After a moment of silence, the entire march will ring out with trumpets, bells, drums, whistles as more than 100,000 people sound an alarm for climate action.
2:00 pm—March End
Location: 11th Ave. in the streets between 34th Street and 38th Street
Description: The march will end with a block party. At the center of the close will be a massive tree installation created by Brooklyn-based artist Swoon. See more details here