Or do whatever you do we have the tv here tonight you dont want your phone to be the one that rings on national television. I will be running around with a wireless microphone if you have a question please raise your hand and wait for me to get to you. That way it is picked up for the recording as well if you decide you like to have a copy of the book after the talk head back into the store to pick up a copy or two or three. Then come right back to sign them. Listing to a better planet. To take action on Climate Change and water shortages and air pollution. This is a practical solution to sustainability also environmental leaders from across the political spectrum professor of financial law at environmental studies from the former head Connecticut Department of protection and is highly qualified to have written this book. The book includes fresh thinking on topics free ranging from big data Environmental Justice to fracking and systems analysis public land so there is a lot in this book and he will talk about it much more eloquently so please welcome daniel sp. [applause] thank you so very much. Thank you all for being here and taking time out of your busy lives to be part of a conversation i will speak for a few minutes but i wanted to get into back and forth dialogue interrupt me if there is a pressing point or to explain the concept or dig into something you want to challenge. Im thrilled to have you here at what is truly a critical moment for the country not just because of what is going on with the impeachment hearings but a critical moment for the environment and all of us know there has been a lot going on with fires in california increasingly as the new norma normal, a deregulatory agenda in washington that has an enormous number of people worried about the framework of Environmental Protection in place over 50 years. And frank lee beyond that a whole set of questions of Us Engagement on issues like Climate Change and participation in the International Agreement of paris Climate Change there is a lot going on and it is a particularly good moment to dig in and ask what is the future . How do we move ourselves as the book attempts to suggest to a Sustainable Future . I want to share some thoughts on that question and then what are the challenges and what it will take to break the gridlock to move us toward a path that provides way to go across political, regional divides and ways that people not come to agreement on how to move the agenda of energy and environment and broad sustainability. And in the midst of chaos , some things are clear. We do face serious and important environmental challenges Climate Change is looming large over profoundly reshaping the world we live in and the planet we inhabit the water issues are significant air quality, exposure to heavy metal all of us live and work with the flint water crisis and that the world has Environmental Issues to remain unaddressed and critically urgent to address. From the academic point of view the planetary boundaries has now been well chronicled so we know there is a pressing set of issues that cannot be ignored and now we are stuck for a generation i would argue since the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change was launched which was the last major piece of environmental legislation but we have not seen such redirecting of our Environmental Program and focus. We have urgent needs and also clearly have changed circumstances from the time our framework was put together beginning with conversations in the sixties spurred by silent spring spurred by Critical Issues and then 1970 of course now we are headed for the 50th anniversary for a number of things that happened at that moment. The 1970 birthday kicked off the modern Environmental Movement in many ways and in many parts of the country april 2020 we will celebrate the 50th anniversary. 1970 also the policy act was put together as a Framework Structure of our Environmental Program and what people see today the Sustainability Framework we may use to redefine the Program Going forward into the 21st century it is the launch of the epa and the Clean Air Act seen as the critical piece of structure of air pollution control. We have been at this for 50 years but the world is very different today from the seventies or sixties or eightie eighties. In the last 25 years had a complete transformation around Digital Technology and the potential of Information Technology and Communication Technology not available and within that framework framed around a lack of data of the epa federal government to step in and tell us the problems and Technology Solutions who should take responsibility for action monitoring if they take action on a topdown basis and frankly following a model we now call command and control Regulatory Framework depending on mandates from on high its a very different world with an abundance of data with Incredible Technology allow us to track with much better precision we can model to understand where harm comes from who is affected and how much all of which is very new. In the past we had to generalize to get a framework of rules in place today we can be much more granular we also have much better science. Epidemiology has improved dramatically in the 50 year period for go we have a great deal of knowledge of air pollution or water exposure. And we also learned some people exposed to a certain level would not be affected if its air pollution and they had compromise respiratory systems could be badly affected by that same level of pollution so there was a broad distribution of impact and how it will affect different people we also learned a lot in the Ecological Sciences of the study of nature fundamentally one of the premises of our Legal Framework to have an air and waste and water act is a mistake we live in a world deeply interconnected in the core insight the need to manage in an integrated way to understand the deep interconnectedness for citizens thinking to recognize those as fundamental to good policy and i would argue broadly the systems dynamic needs to be applied across the spectrum another element of the 20th century approach of environmental law and policy was this idea we should break problems apart to get manageable bites we could handle . But in doing so we didnt get the integration otherwise available to solve problems in an integrated and thoughtful way and it tended to leave us to ignore the tradeoffs we didnt understand environmental policy had to be made in the context of economic consequences. We did not Pay Attention that when you invest the certain aspect you may not have money or resources for staffing left to focus on other issues. Absolutely we have not fully processed in the seventies and eighties how profoundly shaped the environmental world would be like Energy Policy choices. We have a deep appreciation for better integration and energy and environment and air water and waste federal state local managed in the integrated way that is the fundamental points of learning. Now we have 50 years of policy experience more are to some kinds of solutions so just to give a quick example some issues like lead exposure there is no safe level and we just want to get out of the ecosystem and we have done that there is a an enormous success with lead exposure to be the best because of all the things we have learned, the danger exposure particularly for children is the most profound. We have done a pretty good job getting led out of gasoline and paint even the blood levels of lead have dropped dramatically. That is a huge policy success. One of the other things i would say is and to do Environmental Protection for those who try to argue thats not true. Billions of dollars saved huge amount of Public Health gain with lack of exposure to cancercausing agents and Life Expectancy the one thing we know for sure is the digital model of governance federal government topdown will need to give way to much more multilevel structure of decisionmaking leadership and actual implementation of Environmental Programs something needs to be done at the federal level to set the standards but statelevel implementation is key and that degree statelevel choice to match circumstances with the strategy is important to look at Critical Issues like Climate Change some of the most Creative Work is done at the city scale. A big believer city state federal for issues like Climate Change degree of Global Cooperation as well and thats now the best practice we have recognized and clearly do need multiple levels. Further we need to recognize it is not done by government at all that the private sector and we recognize there are opportunities to engage not just the Business World but finance world huge potential to flow capital tool Environmental Solutions coming back from problem causing elements in the Business World with business behavior no longer delivers the results that we want or creating problems that we cannot afford and in that regard i would tell you fundamental to the vision is a principal for the 2t century that i think reflects the changing norm in society already evident to underpin the path forward of 21st century strategy thats the idea Going Forward any business that has a Business Model to depend on putting harm on the community and pollution of the smokestack or a pipeline or any overspill over of harm would not be permitted to do that anymore or at least with not paying for it. So we build on a dude norm that says me will count on the end of externalities. And me will end up with a new game plan that says we can track where arms come from it anything beyond the minimus level has to be either stopped or paid for in a systematic way thats the new norm for other categories in that Society Gathering in 1974 this conversation i might as well be smoking a pipe so you would be smoking cigarettes there would be clouds of smoke and that was the norm. We didnt have clarity on the degree of health risk but today we are very clear if you light up a cigarette today the norms have fundamentally changed is not just a bad call headeds unacceptable with regard to pollution but to be seen as an acceptable way to do business. One of the things we need is moral clarity on the idea that causing harm to others is no longer acceptable in the pollution context to extract sources whether cut from public lands water extracted from shared rivers or any number of things also has to be paid for we cannot up people to take things for their own private benefit from Public Resources without paying for them. This is the new principal that provides the foundation and what we will see is spilling out broadly in the months and years ahead also with regard to governance its quite clear the element of what is important Going Forward fundamentally the need to focus on equity and fairness and Environmental Justice and it turns out part of the question is who gets the benefit of Environmental Programs and efforts and who suffers the consequences of environmental in action thats it we have to think about in the years ahead. One more element, i think it will turn out environmental progress will depend not on the activities of the epa or anyone in the environmental arena but derivative of people in other sectors a huge issue Going Forward is sustainable agriculture. Theres a great essay in this book the us reinsurers alliance. So sustainable food, huge issue not want that epa can deliver. Management of public lands not nepa issue interior department issue and matter for private landowners. So understanding government actors and logic of private sector play a significant role as part of the transformed structure of governance. A beautiful essay in this book former chief Climate Change negotiator of the United States makes the point in Climate Change context to implement that agreement we have to have the wto implement or the world bank or who, all these entities have to come together to contribute to a more unified effort particularly human huge problems like Climate Change. A fourth reality that is already absorbing the changes so if we see the end of these externalities already playing out of producer responsibility so even before the government gets to legislating you see companies starting to respond and recognize if they are causing harm, increasingly that will be called out and questions raised fragoso even as we start this process there is already pressure leading people to Pay Attention and that is quite positive. Its in a number of arenas, not just Climate Change but that companies are carbon exposed with stranded assets to the d carbonized future and we see it in waste with a growing recognition pay for what you throw away and dont pay for what you recycle. Theres a great essay on the topic. Finally as a personal observation of the account that i offer in this book its clear we do need transformative change beginning with the need to create a Clean Energy Future as the foundation for the American Economy and the Global Economy that the transformative change cannot be done on a oneparty basis every time one party seeks to make change happen shoving it down the throats of the other party the efforts are taken out you see that with a Clean Power Plan obama put forward and was dismantled and a number of the obama initiatives like obama care to be cut away out and diminished and taken out. Frankly i could promise you the id regulatory agenda the trump team is advancing will not stand as the pendulum swings back in one or five years those deregulatory activities taken without good science or data of clear policy logic will be undone again. Sweat that tells us is it is time to get into a serious conversation. This is what the book tries to do from the yale school of forestry and environmental studies from the university of wyoming and said we need to get people to get together lines ideological party or young and old, really think together of a path that i call up the middle others call a third way that something that has the potential to have Common Ground for a Sustainable Future that so many of us want. It might be important to focus on Climate Change initially but the bringing people together agenda is important for air water waste chemical issues. I just want to share five elements of what i see to support the agenda Going Forward. First is an emphasis on innovation. The debate over the most important finding of social science in the 20th century has been but a candidate is healthy institutions of all kinds need to continually innovate a commitment to Continuous Improvement examining what works looking at what doesnt work is critical to success in every domain including Environmental Protection and its my observation the environmental arena is curiously untouched by a commitment to innovation over the last 25 years to bring innovation to step one calling red lights to green lights and at the core is the 2h century Environmental Protection all about telling people what they could not do. Stop this red light. Dont go there and we made progress. We shifted people towards cleaner production and as a result we have cleaner water but it is still the incomplete approach to Environmental Protection. What it didnt do to steer individuals or businesses and entrepreneurs to where society needed to devote time and resources and energy and money to provide solutions. I argue for the need for green lights to signal the people where we want them to go to solve societys environmental challenges starting with a d carbonized Energy Strategy we do need much different Electricity Generation in the years ahead and incentives to drive people they are. We need to think about incentives as we create our framework of law and policy so steering people to what we want them to do has a lot of ways but more direct incentives have a role to play as well theres a fantastic essay in this book taking the model of tiger grants from the transportation arena to get publicprivate partnerships to build Energy Infrastructure using that to fund and promote and extend Clean Energy Investment thats a specific incentive driving progress and also theres more places where incentives can be brought to bear to change behavior. One of the big that some of which come from the government but some could come from other directions customers are asking increasingly how are you doing on the environment quirks i want to buy from a Green Company not wanting doing harm. Investors are creating incentives for change as a growing number of people ask about environmental and social governance performance of where their money is invested and saying i want better alignment between my values and where you put my money and what my portfolio looks like so huge potential from change corporate behavior because people that bring the money into the companies are asking for it. So there are lots of interesting points of leverage that really start to have affect innovation of the center and incentives matter and Information Technology is entirely transformative and i would say all of us in this room know the world has been transformed almost every sector and business and aspect of life. Perhaps the sector i looked at least affected is Environmental Protection. No Baseball Team picks the players like it did 20 or 40 years ago with the scout chewing tobacco and drooling to say hes got it we study data starting with the redskins socks moving on to the chicago cubs you can make a difference including methods we didnt even know that we needed. Nobody pays attention to batting average it is base percentage its more indicative of success so we have a huge capacity to draw big data with enormous pools of data that are just begin to be tapped and analyzed no business markets away did 20 or 30 years ago so the same effects transforming society need to be brought into the environmental arena. Also i would tell you we have information capacity to judge policy quit consequences to understand which investments are paying off in the fourth element of success my own analysis of the 20th century one of the biggest shortcomings we did not ask where the money would come from to do the things we knew we needed to do. It was assumed if a rule was establish the money would follow and it turns out setting targets and timetables for the Climate Change treaty and assuming people would follow. Guess what quex they did not. I call this the lawyers mistake only lawyers apologize. But it turns out that lawyers think if you adopt a rule pass a law and sign a treaty the behavior will change and the reality is it does not. In many cases it does not and they would say your Climate Change treaty was like writing a Mission Statement where is the business change model or the Implementation Plan quex including where the money would come from some now there is a new push of bonds and banks in a whole set of mechanisms to the projects that have to be done and to deliver a Sustainable Future and that is in fact very promising. Wine question that remains is will be get money to disadvantage communities and an equal proportion to make sure everybody gets participation in this Sustainable Future so a sub element is where we have to change behavior to fundamentally redirect life around the new Clean Energy Push there will be dislocations. One of the things i would tell you in my own past work who will be dislocated or affected or see that life is not as good post transition how do we help them find more comfort quex and in this regard to be the beneficiaries of Environmental Justice but look out across the country to say who was worried about the Clean Energy Future quex those who are more carbon intensive. And if we have a successful Climate Change strategy to have a significant focus on rule support and revitalization that peoples looks better to a d carbonized future than today. That involves bringing fast internet to rural areas and a sense of opportunity perhaps healthcare come attention to the Opioid Crisis a whole array of investments with the fossil fuel affect so they can become more excited of the Energy Transitio transition. So finally i would save my fifth element that is critical to success is implementation. We did a lot of programs some worked some did it but we didnt step back to ask systematically whats working and whats not and we need metrics to track it a whole set of environmental approaches that we can use to figure out to highlight best practices stimulate Competitive Pressures and by doing that to track and focus on implementation for better on the ground results. This is a challenging moment. I will not deny in the political world and Business World and more broadly across society i think its a great moment a book for better planet and to dig into the real work that needs to be done to think about the framework technologies toward a Sustainable Future. And then to lay out not a comprehensive plan but a menu of ideas to bring us toward a Sustainable Future. Thank you for your questions. Thoughts criticisms or comments quex as a law professor if you dont ask questions i might take some dialogue and ask you questions. So obviously with those externalities to work its way downstream so then is it 100 percent and then to be reinvesting that quex. So we start by saying that i personally under consideration to be front and center but really a question transition to move to the new framework of pricing and for the harm that they caused in the things that we do to cause harm to recognize when we have to make those payments we are forced to think of the alternative and move us toward behavior that is beneficial and to stimulate innovation. When i have to pay, i say next time i get a nonpolluting car. And they are trying to do that. And i do have an electric vehicle it is a darned good car the first 20 years ago were like golf carts and were terrible. And that could be fun and exciting and good acceleration. In making this promising and not discouraging that confidence that Economic Security would be provided to all is fundamental and this means the approach of the past whatever money is taken in is totally wrong and to be spent on the transition in fact i think political success and whatever it takes to get back into the transition is what should be done. I wanted to get your thoughts on the framing of these issues. And with the technological. And what is the goal for culture approaches in the coming years there should be a moral clarity around the rules is not an economic comment its the principle to say what is morally or ethically correct and then to back it up with a price signal to steer it towards that is less damaging. And it turns out paying for it is easier than ordering it so if you command and control people there is a lot of evasion behavior that leaves less than optimum results so im pretty confident spending 35 years studying the field that pricing does work and changes behavior and incentivize innovation very much in favor of that. But the bigger question i perceive to be can we get where we need to go without a loan quex one of the things that is needed that some of the transition reflects leadership on this point we need to remind people there is a world bigger than themselves to extend not only across the planet and to think about our own lives and one of the things from the paris 2015 Climate Change agreement was leadership and pope francis cyclical in the environment with an extraordinary document i will assign you homework if you havent read it incredibly thoughtful and reminding people each and every one of us to share a community and the families that depend on us in generations yet to come you dont have to be a catholic to see the importance of that spiritual statement. And by the way by the time i first read it i was a little bit annoyed to go off the environment to go to economic injustice but now i think that is important to because you cannot solve these problems if it is perceived its coming on the backs of the least advantage not only recognizing a bigger role but the pathway to get to where we need to go for special efforts to attend those that might be most hurt our already disadvantaged so spirituality matters there is a great essay in the book by Mary Evelyn Tucker on this point thinking of spirituality to recognize the starting point all the worlds great religions take Environmental Stewardship seriously and how we owe it to our god to protect nature and that could be and should be part of the political pathway forwar forward. They have argued the real problem fighting Climate Change is the whole system of capitalism. And we need to make fundamental changes to our system for Climate Change. Are there any structural changes you would recommend . This is an interesting and important debate that i have been involved in 20 plus years going back to the time one of the great environmental leaders was dean of environmental studies. If any Single Person could be credited to launch the movement who literally sat in the dining hall to scratch out on a legal pad to launch the National ResourcesDefense Council to push for the clean water act in the legal strategy to come in behind them. And now concluded capitalism is unsustainable and has to be taken down. So if it is read doing capitalism is even bigger i would rather stay focused on redirect capitalism to make it more sustainable than to undo it. There are very important ways to reconnect capitalism with sustainability without entirely and doing it starting with the principle of externality its unacceptable to have a Business Model posing harm on society if there is residual heart to pay for it it is a big step to aligning capitalism and a Sustainable Future. I am not trivializing that element of transition but with that success and refinement of capitalism and then to redo capitalism and sustainability after. The right wing is under attended to. What do you think is the future of Economic Growth for a Sustainable Future . I say everything is a question because with Sustainable Growth and that is the idea of growth itself. There is a very healthy debate and some of the leading thinkers of growth is incompatible with sustainability and from the university of maryland and i am impressed by the ways by those growth models to accommodate sustainability and evolve. There is a lot of opportunity for the dematerialization. So all of us hold our music in our pockets. Not that long ago, this required vast stacks that you may remember records. But not own the lots of physical material by packaging and the digitalization of music is a beautiful example to have a better quality product with much less environmental impact. And with a number of directions so this goes back to spirituality but also how people want to lead their lives but i see a lot of people thinking about experiences and to lead a life with a more sustainable mention. So is there a tension between sustainability . Yes its critical we dont but those distinctions and with each other and fundamentally one of the hardest things is to recognize large parts of the world where people are very worried about material wellbeing and if you tell them they have to give that up with a sustainable trajectory, its not happening. Especially we cant afford china to have lifestyles like we do. Its entirely possible they will not want televisions or refrigerators or cars. The real key is a car that does not pollute. I think we are headed there. But these are important questions and one of the things i see is the younger folks stepping up to this challenge and forcing us to come up with better answers. Im interested in the comments to price externality and with command and control regulation and theres a lot of bipartisan support for marketbased solutions. Of course around the country there are millions of polluting sources. T the prices and what are the criteria . One is when you have regulations based on science and technology a steel mill in pennsylvania willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars because they knew the plant in ohio did exactly the same thing. So you need to build some kind of equity in that mechanism that tell us how you see pricing working out. This is the harm charges. So to start to make the emissions at such a fine grade level thats not the starting point for this prick what has to be only a de minimis level of harm that you pay for it but now this isnt difficult to measure we can measure emissions and i would say the environmental agencies federal and state should be distributed to calibrate the harm. There is a lot of data on which to build in the equity comes from there being a math problem the amount of emissions times the harm factor we will see what your pricing will be if you have a factory outperformed by the one across the state or the country better figure out how to take the harms down reduce submissions or change the structure so theres less harmful stuff admitted. This isnt a trivial exercise for what we do in a number of cases and we have seen success to require people to report on no harms the toxic relief inventory under the community right to know act not precise but of the emissions to air water and land and produced a huge volume of information and with that regulatory mandate companies did because suddenly they were confronted with the facts of how much was going up the smokestack. Even if you dont have a precise way to put a value Getting Started is okay over time and pricing is a normative impact that we dont want the harm and think about how to stop it even if it isnt the motivation. I will give you one example from connecticut there is a tencent per plastic bag charge in place at the Grocery Store that doesnt change the economics of that many families to be honest but it changes the behavior of a lot theres been an 80 percent reduction plastic bag use with tencent charges is nowhere near really to reflect the harm but it signaled every time you check out you should be thinking about bringing your reusable bag are going back to the paper bag with a lower environmental footprint. So the moral signal is important of the economic effect to the harm charges to make people accountable for the burden they put on society. So that me ask about the dynamic with those proposals that you mentioned so the human psychological frame is a dynamic situation to appreciate and feel loss more than you feel gain is not symmetrical by any means so thinking why dont we have multimedia statutes. I was on the hill for many years so i heard that discussion, from time to time. A lot of people in the Environmental Community think would benefit from the multimedia approach feel lost because they say there goes 40 years of cases for the Clean Air Act or this is a good case example when clinton try to make epa a Cabinet Department to say all environmental regulations have a Risk Assessment and that would make regulation much more difficult. So they quickly lost interest because they didnt want to run the risk of the loss. So in a number of these areas to appreciate the reality of the asymmetry between people feeling they will lose something that they currently have two outweigh the appreciation of what they will gain is that dynamic the Environmental Community has to take into effect and also the money you collect for charging from externalities . If you give everybody a check once a month. You just give it back to people because otherwise the perception they will never see a cane has scientific research. They will see that loss so think about these policy proposals to that come out in any of your essays quick. Absolutely what that academic frame is to focus behavioral economics that takes those psychological elements into account to fundamentally recognize what you are hinting at the old model was based on a rational think so we are not that rational and you are pointing out one of these elements is that we hold on to things and worry about loss more than we accept the upside of gain and thats why i emphasized so strongly, the transition strategy you have to facilitate that transition and work to make it possible and one more anecdote drawing on my time as commissioner of connecticut epa and after i left they said what did you learn . What was the most surprising . I learned changes incredibly difficult to bring about even when the status quo plainly is not working. It turns out agencies are worried that the change will lead one leave them worse off its not just loss but the thought that whatever they have been promised will not come to pass and it raise another issue short supply that is real concerning is trust in some regard you have to trust each other to work on change. At the other size uses that to jam the agenda then people dont want to work to gather. We have to get out of that mode of noncooperative behavior to build a base of trust prick i would also tell you the models of success, i could bring Connecticut Energy scattered elements of policy to gather with the environmental pieces to get 36 out of 36 state senators every republican and democrat to vote for that. 146 out of 151 state representatives. All the five. Thirtyone five said three later said they meant to vote yes but it was late and i didnt know what button to push. [laughter] but it took a lot of giveandtake and once it works they will say they were with you all along. But it is a compromise prick i did not get everything i wanted. I wanted to wait all houses and apartments for energy efficiency. If you rent an apartment door by a house you get a plaque that says what to expect of the energy bill this is not totally normal connecticut Real Estate Industry association attacked me nonstop so then forget that we will do that another day but of course that day never comes but you have to accept you will not get everything you want. I considered not just getting 80 percent which is what i ended up with but even 50 percent it would have been happy so willing to accept half a loaf to recognize changes incremental and theres good reason to believe the best success historically is on the basis so in the last week we have seen in the newspaper growing evidence the ozone layer is stealing so to phase out those cfcs is actually working the countries have come together every one has a strategy and it wasnt done in one fell swoop but with the Vienna Convention seven years later the montreal protocol seven years after that under the Vienna Convention to say we will phase out and then two years ago the amendment that said oh by the way the number one substitute is now a Greenhouse Gas we have to get rid of that. So incremental progress done right and consistently reevaluated, exposed a constant check on a better strategy or additional element can deliver results and inpatients is often an enemy of success and if you want to make change happen you have to be willing to help those who suffer consequences get on board. That is especially true of Climate Change because theres a real risk if you try and do it in two years instead of ten those that would feel wiped out because on past expectations to derail the train rather than get on board. You mention a couple things that indicate progress to progress overseas with this development that the main substitute was a major contributor and with that example to see the mining of materials is necessary we require energy. And we waste those by tossing our phone when a new model comes around so it does have a corollary problem with theres actually a solution to killing elephants because the tasks were good for billiard balls plastics allowed us not to chop down the trees but now theres a micro plastics problem in the ocean now we have these unintended consequences. So is it possible to converge on solutions or just approach different problems quick. You highlighted several things to be part of the 21st century strategy to move to for a Sustainable Future. So there are tradeoffs and in the past we are hidden from them and today we should be much more open in fact we might want to reframe our National Policy act around more expressed view of tradeoffs