Dear guests, I warmly welcome you to this public event of the Global University Leaders
Council Hamburg, hosted by Universität Hamburg as part of the organizational consortium with
the German Rectors Conference and the Kerberstiften.
As a gathering of the presidents and Rectors of the largest and most important universities
worldwide, this year's Global University Leaders Council has selected the topic of
climate change and the role of universities in this matter.
Our event starts today with a lecture by Nobel Laureate Esther Bluflow.
The biannual GUC is being held for the fourth time this year.
It is a format that brings together university leaders to discuss emerging problems and look
for common solutions in and around universities worldwide.
The wonderful thing for an academic and research institution is their problems abound.
This is true not only in terms of the common development of the international university scene,
but also in terms of the joint development of far-reaching solutions to well-known social issues.
As it is the case with climate change, we want to open up the discussion to the local and
international public and give them an insight into this top-level event in Hamburg.
The second part of today's event is also a top-level affair, a panel discussion on the same topic
following Esther Bluflow's lecture. In addition to Professor Bluflow, this part of the event
involves the participation of Professor Ault. He is president of the German Rector's Conference,
Professor Friedmann, president of the International Association of Universities.
Professor Farqeng, she is vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town, South Africa,
and last but not least, University of Hamburg's Professor Stama, chair of the World Climate
Research Program Joint Scientific Committee, and chair of the Scientific Cluster of Excellence
called Climate, Climatic Change, and Society. We can expect an event packed with complex
reflections and discussions on hands to untangle, intensify, and moderate. This event
is Dr. Barbara Hans, who until recently was editor-in-chief for the SPIGL and SPIGL online,
and who is, we are very proud to say, an alumna of University at Hamburg. I'm delighted, Dr. Hans,
that you have taken on this task. It certainly makes it easier for me, and so I turn it over to you.
Thank you very much, dear Professor Lenson, for the kind words and the invitation, and above all,
for your idea to bring together the presidents and directors of the most important universities
worldwide for this exchange. This exchange of university leaders internationally and across
disciplines is perhaps more necessary than ever, because the COVID crisis has highlighted the
importance of the role of science in addressing political, health, and economic challenges
worldwide. Today, I have not only the pleasure of being your moderator, but also the burden of
being spoilsport, which is perhaps sometimes the same thing anyway. I will have to pay meticulous
attention to the time as we have a tight schedule for this. I apologize in advance. And I also see
myself as an advocate for the audience in this public event, as we will include questions from
you, the audience, and answer them live in the discussion. So please send your questions to
guc at uni minus hamburg dot de. We will try to include and cluster as many questions as possible,
but we hope you do understand that we can only make a selection. It is now my utmost pleasure and
honor to welcome Professor Esther Duflo. Professor Duflo is Nobel laureate. She shared the 2019 Nobel
Memorial Prize in economic sciences with Apigee Banerjee and Michael Kramer for their experimental
approach to alleviating global poverty. She is one of only two women who have brought home the
prize in economics. She's the Apto Latif Jameer Professor of Poverty, Elevation, and Development
Economics in the Department of Economics at MIT, and co-founder and co-director of the Apto Latif
Jameer Poverty Action Lab. In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives
of the poor with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She has worked on
health, education, financial inclusion, environment, and governance. Professor Duflo,
thank you very much for attending today's event. Bienvenue, vous avez la parole.
Thank you very much, Dr. Hans. Thank you, Professor, for inviting me to this important event.
I'm very delighted that the subject of climate change is the topic of the conference of
president of universities, because I did think this is one topic that is of prime
importance for the world and where universities are unique places to do something to bring a real
contribution and a real difference, both because of the excellence that exists in departments and
also because climate change is an issue that has many facets to it, and all of these facets are
represented in most universities. In particular, in many cases, we think about climate change
mostly as something that will have a very big technological component in the answer.
What I want to argue today, being a social scientist, and in particular an economist,
and one that focuses on poor countries, is that we also need to take into account the
social science component to any fight against climate change, and that universities are uniquely
placed to help us do that. I'm going to share my screen for the presentation.
So the presentation could be titled, Good Economics for Warmer Times,
in the sense that I'm going to try and use what we know about economics to think about,
what does it tell us about some of the difficulty we have in front of us when we're thinking about
climate change. So by the end of last summer, by the middle of last summer, rather one could
have thought that there would be a very big new urgency on climate change. This is a photo from
last summer taken in San Francisco, and you will recognize the very disturbing orange hue of the
sky. This is due to catastrophic wildfire that ravaged California over the summer.
But soon after, we stopped talking about these issues, the media cycle
circled, and the question of climate change became a little bit more secondary to the COVID crisis.
During 2020, there was also a lot of discussion about the potential impact of the COVID crisis
on the mission. The mission went down a lot during COVID crisis, about a little over 5%
in 2020 compared to 2019. But by 2021, they were back exactly to the level of 2019,
and the increase in 2021 was over 5%. It's projected to be over 5% of emission of greenhouse
gases, which is particularly the biggest increase in recent years. Of course, it's a catch-up of
what happened during the pandemic, but it's a disturbing catch-up, especially since most of
these causes accounted for growth in the emission due to coal and due to oil, and mostly due to coal,
almost half of it, particularly in China. Why is the problem of climate change so
difficult politically and geopolitically? The first reason is that the emissions that are
responsible for climate change are mainly to the behavior of rich country citizens,
and in particular, and more generally perhaps, to rich citizens in all countries.
Let me show a graph that summarizes that. You are probably accustomed to use about the fact that
China is responsible for a big share of the emission of greenhouse gases and CO2 equivalent
at least in recent years, events not being told historically. But the thing is, China is the
factory of the world. So the reason why China produces so much CO2 is because it's producing
the goods that are being consumed in the richer countries and are being consumed also by rich
Chinese or rich Indian in poor countries, but mostly are being consumed by rich countries.
Thomas Piketty and Lucaie Schonsel estimate that whenever your income goes up by 10%,
your CO2 emission in terms of what you consume goes up by about 9%. And we can use this number
in order to compute the CO2 emission, not where they are produced, but where they are consumed.
So in other words, we relocate whatever is done in China to the consumption of rich citizens of
the US or rich citizen in Europe. And when we do that, we get something which can be easily
summarized as the 10-50 rules. And the first half of that is that the 10% largest emitters
around the world are responsible for 50% of the world emission, and the 50% lowest emitters
are responsible for 10% of the world emission. So if you look at the graph carefully, you're
seeing that it's not quite exactly 10-50. It's the 10% emitters emit 45% of the world emission
and the bottom 50% 13% of the world emission. But the 10-50 rule allows to capture both sides of the
equation. So what does it mean? It means that the emissions are mainly produced to fulfill the
lifestyle of rich people in a rich country. And the poorer countries which have not emitted
historically very much are also not the one responsible for climate change today. That's
the first third of the equation. On the other hand, however, the cost of climate change are
going to be felt predominantly in the poorer parts of the world. Why is that? Well, the first reason
is that the poorer part of the world happened to be in the warmer places. So this is a map of
temperature today, a heat map. So when it's more red, it's hotter. And you can see that the south
of the US is warm. Latin America, the north of Latin America is warm. Africa, the north of Africa,
northern part of Sub-Saharan Africa is extremely warm, as is India and the north part of India and
Pakistan. So of course, Africa and India are very, very rich places, very, very poor places.
So the places where most poor people live are the places that are already hot today.
And what this means is that assume that the temperature of the earth is going up by one
or two degrees, let's say two, which is the best we seem to be able to do if everything goes well.
If the earth warms by two degrees, even if the warming was uniform across the planet,
it's starting from a different basis. So if we take into account that what the climate models
are telling us is that in the next 20 years, when you're looking at the number of very hot days,
which are the days that are costly, both for human health and for productivity,
you will find that these days are mainly added in Africa, in almost all of Africa,
will add a large number of very hot days, apart of Latin America, in particular the north of Brazil,
which is already very poor, and the north of India and Pakistan. So the places that are poor
will add more of these very hot days, which are the days that are costly. Meanwhile, if you take
France or Germany, it will not have very many hot days, it will add more pleasant days. So we won't
have as much negative impact coming from these very hot days. If you look at 2050 now, this is
even worse, where you have the narcissist of Brazil and the substantive part of Africa going
into the very dark red, showing that they are going to have many, many very hot days by 2050.
In addition, I said that there is a non-linear effect of days that are quite hot, above 32
Celsius or 90 Fahrenheit. That's true both for productivity impact, for example, via the effect
of hot days on agriculture, that's true for productivity impact even in manufacturing,
and that's also true for human life. The problem is that when you're in a poor country, not only
you can have more hot days, but you're going to be less equipped to deal with those hot days.
So if you start with the economics of it, in a country that's mainly agricultural,
or where a lot of the work takes place outside, you're going to have larger drops in productivity
from hot days than in countries where a lot of the work is done in offices. So the productivity
impact, the economic impact of a hot day is going to be larger in a country like India or in Africa,
where a lot of the work is happening outside and is weather dependent. When we look at mortality,
it's exactly the same thing. So this graph looks, compares various localities over time in the past.
So we can't look at the effect of climate, but we can look at the effect of variation in the weather.
And what happened, so you can compare, for example, district in India, where it was unseasonably hot,
compared to very similar district where in that particular area it was not unseasonably hot.
And combining yearly variation with geographical variation, you can look at the impact
on a survival probability of the number of very hot days that you're getting
of a very hot day in India compared to the rest of the world. And what you're seeing here is that
when you reach the warm temperature, this graph is expressed in Fahrenheit,
but you can think of it in centigrade above 90 degrees. If you're in India, you're starting
seeing a very negative impact on mortality. So you have increased in mortality for every extra
day above 90 degrees and even more after 95 degrees, so 30 or 32. But now if you look at the US,
you don't see something like that. There is a tiny effect, much, much smaller and hardly
significant. And that's mostly due to the fact that in the US, places that are getting hot
have air conditioning. So it does get hot in Texas, but everybody has air conditioning.
And in fact, when you're looking at overtime in the past, in the 1950s, they also used to be a
steep temperature mortality gradient in the US. But that relationship has disappeared. It has
lowered down starting in the 60s to become just about zeros in the 90s. So the reason why hotter
days are more costly in India is because they don't have the technologies to protect people.
And of course, what is really particularly saddening is that the very technology that
protects people which are air conditioning are themselves also polluting. So in India,
for example, they would like to install air conditioning. The cheaper one are the HFC air
conditioning, which themselves sends a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And so
India doesn't want to give away air conditioning because they want to protect their people today.
But that's at the cost of warming that is going to come to harm them and the rest of us in the future.
So if you combine these two things that it's getting hotter in places that are already hot
and in places that are less well organized to protect themselves, again, the heat,
you have the consequences that the mortality cost of predicted warming in the climate
are larger in poor countries than in rich countries. And in particular, they are concentrated
in Pakistan and north of India and in the Sahel region in Africa for the next 20 years.
And then even more so, if we're looking at 2050, in the next, this concentration happens. And you
notice that there are blue zones for the very cold countries, including Germany, you'll be happy to
see where in fact, from a mortality point of view, the warming of the planet will be a good thing
because there will be fewer very cold days that also kill people. And therefore, although the
the emissions responsible for climate change are mainly in rich countries,
the cost of climate change are mainly in poor countries. And it's not a very good situation
for them to be placed for negotiating when basically they are not responsible for a problem
that they are the ones who are suffering from the most. And therefore, it's not particularly
surprising that when push comes to shove, the rich countries have not been very good at either
making commitment or even worth respecting those commitments. The third point I want to
make is we need to act now to prevent climate change. We cannot wait until the situation is
worth. Some people, maybe a bit cynical people might say, well, you know, this is not urgent
enough. There is the problem is not in front of people that don't understand the strength of the
problem. So we are never going to get political agreement now. So let's just wait a little bit.
And then later, it's going to be obvious to people that we need to do something. And then it's going
to be possible to generate a political action. And it is clear that some politicians have this
reasoning in the back of their mind. I think this the current covid pandemic showed this is a very
flawed reasoning. The reason is that we have just shown the rich world has just shown the G7,
the G20, the OECD has just shown that when we have our back against the world, when we are facing a
crisis, that's a world crisis, we're just not very good at dealing with a crisis in a way that keeps
the common interest at mind. During the covid crisis, rich countries spent large amounts of
money on their own citizens and about 20% of our GDP in Europe and in the US went to fiscal
stimulus measure. But there was no increase in aid towards the poor country. And as a result,
they had no money to spend on their own citizens. They spent 2% of their of their GDP on their
citizens. And now even on vaccines, which have evidently a global public good, even more so
and more so evidently than climate, because we now realize with variants that we are just
basically creating the seed of a next crisis even for us, the rich countries, the action is slow and
has been putting the rich countries first. The rich country invested in enough capacity to produce
for themselves and not more than that. And then they quickly cornered the water supply.
And it's only now that things are a little bit quieter on the home front and the
vaccination companies are going well, that we start seeing maybe turning a corner in terms of
thinking about other countries. So that all suggests that we must act now on climate change
before the panic sets, because the expense shows that the rich countries will just not do something
for the poor countries, even if the situation is much more dire there, if we face a big climate
catastrophe, because they will want to, they will feel the compulsion, political or otherwise,
to first invest in their own citizens. The next point I want to make is how do we act?
And in climate discussions, there is a strong dominance of technological conversation.
Most of the climate conversations are about commitments and then about the technology to
reach there. And the hope is that technologies will be sufficient to produce more efficiently
with better technologies. So ultimately, for example, there is a big decrease in the cost
of solar power. And the hope is that ultimately solar and wind will be cheap enough to replace
the old technology. And in fact, it is correct that there has been a big decline in solar.
However, and for example, in the last year, there's been a huge increase in
solar installation capacity. However, even in the last year, it's not been enough to offset
the emission from traditional coal and petroleum. So most of the discussion is what can,
and maybe what discussions also about what universities can do, are focused on the
technology, you know, what can we, can we invent better batteries? Can we invent better nuclear
power? Can we invent better wind power tunnels or something like that? Can we work on carbon capture
or whatnot? However, in the true, in real life, and the impact of purely technological solutions
is often disappointing and insufficient. And there are examples done from my research or the
research of people in our lab that shows that you take solutions that which sounds very, very
promising from a technological point of view. For example, the idea of weathering homes,
a home installation, or for example, providing energy consultancy and loans to firms in India,
so they can be more energy efficient when they produce. And then the human behavior around this
technology means that basically there is little or no impact on the environment. In fact, in the
case of the energy consultancy in India, the firms that got the energy consultancy, and that got the
loans to get the new equipment, if anything, consume more energy at the end of it. The reason
being that they saved money on their production costs, so they decided to produce more. So that
might be very good for them, but that doesn't achieve anything from the point of view of saving
the planet. So my point is that we cannot rely on technology alone. We have to rely on behavior.
But the good thing is that it's actually possible. I think in the climate conversation, we overestimate
the miracles of technology, and we underestimate the capacity of human being for change.
We assume that, okay, people really want to consume more and more and more, and that has to
be the objective of most people, and it is how it is. And we can force them not to do that with
mandate or nudge them to do that with higher carbon taxes, but that's going to make them unhappy.
So we want to try and limit that by offering them cleaner technology, if we can, to basically keep
our lifestyle as consistent as it is as possible, and also keep it going and always consume more and
more, but perhaps cleaner and cleaner. As I said, I don't believe that it's going to work out
eventually. I think we will need to change behavior and consume less artists, in a less
energy-friendly kind of a way. But I also do believe that people's preferences for more and
more consumption is not something that's given to them at birth. The preferences are very much the
product of social environment, and also affected by habits and what you're used to do, which means
that you can change them, which means that when you're exposed to something new, you can change
your opinion. I'll show you one example that shows both the sensitivity to the social environment,
as well as the power of habits. It's an experiment that was done by power companies in the U.S.,
many power companies did similar experiments. They are sending report cards to their clients,
showing how much energy you consume relative to your neighbors. So you can see here on the top,
someone receiving a very good report card, they're consuming less than their neighbors.
In my house, I don't know why we always get the bad report. So this was done as an experiment,
initially. So many people got the letters, and many totally comparable people did not get the
letter. They were randomly selected, so there is nothing different between treatment and placebo.
And what you see in the first graph to the left is that the people who got the letters
consumed less energy as soon as they started getting them. And more and more, you have
increasing treatment effect as you go along. This is the yellow, the red bars that are all pointing
downwards over time. So as soon as the experiments start in period zero, you start seeing them
consuming less energy. So this is to show that people are sensitive to their image and to what
other people do, and therefore when you send them something like that, they adjust their behavior.
The second point that this experiment allows us to do is to look at what happens over time.
So what it is that they continue this experiment for a long time. For some people,
it continued from January 2008 to January 2013. But for half the group that discontinued the
mailing in 2010. In July 2010. So now you can see what happens after people stopped receiving the
letters. And this is what you see in the blue dotted line. And what you see is that they stopped
going down compared to the control group, but it did not go up. So in other words, they had been
that they acquired while they were receiving those mailers and therefore adjusting to the
consumption of their neighbors are still present with them. And this is something that stays with
them. So it's an experiment that demonstrate that preferences can be changed with very little.
This is almost free to do. And in a durable way, because once we get used to something,
we continue to do it. The first point I want to make is we should not think about climate change
in isolation in the same way that we cannot think of climate change as mainly a technological
problem. We should not think of it as, okay, we are going to deal climate change in isolation to
all the other problems that society has. We cannot tackle climate change in particular without
tackling redistribution and trusting government. Why? Because climate change policy involves
redistribution. It involves losers. It involves winners. So for example, if you have a carbon tax
or a mandate on a certain type of cars, that's going to affect primarily people who rely a lot
on driving in their day-to-day job. And that's often not the most fortunate. And this is why
you can have a protest like this one saying Pittsburgh, not Paris, that refers to the Paris
Agreement. And you get a lot of opposition against climate change policy because people are very
opposed to the redistribution that is implicit in any climate change policy. We had exactly
the same in Paris with the Yellow Jacket Movement, which was started by a protest against a carbon
tax that would increase the price of oil. Similar things happen in Chile when the price of
transportation was increased, or even in Iran when there was a fear of an increase in petrol. So
people perceive rightly that any climate change policy is going to come at the expense of their
bottom line. And if they don't trust that they are going to be compensated for this policy,
then they are just totally against it. And that's why these are the poor people,
and the people who suffer the most economically, who are against climate change policy, who
might be votes for politicians that will protect them against any effort, for example,
to diminish our dependence on coal or on fossil fuel.
Even when governments make an effort to say, oh, this is any policy, any loss that you suffer
is going to be compensated by fixed costs, there is the issue of trust. For example, in India,
electricity is free for farmers, which of course lead to overuse of electricity, but even more
importantly, lead to overuse of water, which is not directly a climate change problem, but
leads to drought, which is a disaster in situation like Punjab. So it is pretty evident that they
need to charge for power. But the only way that they could possibly do that is by compensating
the farmers who are supposed to get free power with cash transfers. And that's what they try to
do in Punjab. But farmers just do not trust them, absolutely not trust them. And therefore,
they think that it's a mid summer madness and that it shouldn't get done. And in fact,
this particular attempt that is referred to in this headline was stopped. Another reason why
you need trust in government is you need any regulation that is decided upon to actually be
enforced. And this graph is from some of my research that looked at India, which has on the
book, very strict regulation for the environment. But in practice, well, on the top graph here,
you're seeing audit reports, private audits conducted by firms need to hire an auditor to
conduct a pollution audit. And you can see that this counts the number of firms that you're seeing
at various level of pollution. And you can see that you're seeing the vast majority of firms
in ranges of pollution that are just below the accepted threshold. Well, these are from the
official audits. But then what we did is we sent back checkers a few, a couple of days after the
audits was done. And the graph, the second graph here shows what happens in the backcheck firms,
and shows that basically, the auditors were lying, because in fact, you find firms that
are polluting much more than the actual than the threshold that were not reported by the audits.
So to conclude, the COVID-19 crisis is a big opportunity, and also a risk. It's another
opportunity because it reminds us that sometimes nature is stronger than us, and dire prediction
of experts come to pass. And that's something that's very difficult for humans. Humans have
a tendency to project themselves in the future, so they think things will stay the way they are.
And that makes it very difficult to think about a future that is warmer, for example. But here,
we couldn't think about a future with a pandemic, and we just experienced it. And that might create
an openness to change behavior, because it's an openness to considering the world in a different
ways. It also shows us that sometimes we need government to steer collective action, which is
something that is going to be essential in a climate change conversation, and also that we
can change our lifestyle without being so unhappy about it. People in Paris started
cycling everywhere, and probably they are going to continue post-pandemic.
Also, it gives us a chance to show solidarity with poorer countries.
I talked about vaccination, on which we have been completely lacking today. But if in a few days
now, the G7 decides to put serious resources, the IMF prices it, for example, at $50 billion
behind a worldwide vaccination campaign, then it would have demonstrated that we were able to work
together towards a common goal. And that could really help creating the legitimacy and trust
that isn't going to be necessary for COP26. In that, there is a huge need, of course,
for research and innovation, not just a changing technology where someone might make money,
because that could be taken care of maybe by the market, but also on how to change behavior at
scale and how to affect policy changes. And that's where universities are absolutely critical.
So I'll finish with one example, which is what we are doing in our universities. So we are running
something called the King Climate Action Initiative, where the mission is to innovate, test, and scale
evidence informed climate solution to benefit people in poverty, which are the most affected
by climate. And we support collaborative research with governments, with NGOs, et cetera, from the
entire world in the area of mitigation, addition, energy access, and pollution reduction.
So that's one example of what one part of one university does. But I think a part that could
not be conducted by anyone but a university. Thank you very much for your attention. And I
look forward to question answers in the debate. Thank you very much for your keynote and your
insights, Professor Diflo. We will now have time to elaborate on some of your thesis before we start
the panel discussion. And there are some questions from the audience. And one actually deals with the
costs of climate change. And someone is writing, modeling shows that climate crisis will cost about
2% to 5% of GDP globally. Is this figure right? If so, what are the financial engineering methods
required to face this? So I don't know. People love forecasting and making numbers. But
I have to tell you, this is one thing economists are terrible at. And that's because forecasting is
difficult. So I don't know if it's going to be 2%. I don't know if it's going to be 5%. It depends
on a number of models. So I think we should be less concerned by the levels than by the principle.
And the principle is what I talked about in the talk, which is that the costs
are going to be larger in poor countries and much smaller in rich countries. And we have to face it
there might be zero in rich countries. And therefore, the issue is not so much
financial engineering. The issue is a worldwide redistribution in a way or the other.
That relates to a second question. Different green new deals have been proposed. What do you think
about them? And what does a green new deal have to entail on an international level?
So at the national level, I think the defining feature of a green new deal compared to what
there was before is the avoidance of too much reliance on a carbon tax as a way to deal with
this thing. So for example, if you look at the US green new deal, the way it was designed by the
Democratic Congress, people, women, mainly, during the Trump administration already, is that
it was very much putting the accent in redistribution at the same time as
infrastructure change to prevent and deal with climate change. So I guess that's kind of what
defines a green new deal compared to kind of the traditional way to think about climate change,
which is a combination of technology and carbon price or maybe cap and trade markets.
And I think that's useful in the details. Of course, we can discuss the details of each proposal.
But the idea that the climate policy has to be accompanied with redistribution and with
creation of jobs for the poor people in the economy, I think is very, very solid. So that's
for the national level. For the international level, and as would have been clear in my talk,
I think it's really important to think about this from an equitable perspective.
And one way to think about this is just to think we need to create a fund to finance
adaptation of climate change and mitigation. There is a figure that is floated of $100
billion a year, which is not even that large compared to what might be needed. But let's start
that. And the question is, who pays for that? And I think a right way to think about the green new
deal at the worldwide level is let's apportion this $100 billion fairly, which means not in
proportion to the emission that are being produced today, but maybe with a progressive structure
so that the people who really consume the country where we have the citizens that are producing the
most of the emission should account for a bigger share of the overall cost of the plan.
So in other words, instead of a flat carbon tax that would be allowed to account for the cost of
climate change, we should have a progressive carbon tax paid mostly by the richer countries.
And you showed photos, pictures of protests in different regions of the world in your presentation.
What unites these people and their protests?
I think what unites these people and their protests around the world
is the worry that the complete mistrust about the distribution inside the countries of the
cost and the benefits of climate change and the cost and the benefits of the adaptation
and mitigation effort. So the worry is that, for example, very much the worry about
in the Gilets Jeune movement, the increase in the tax was proposed, the increase in carbon tax and
therefore in the cost of driving your car, was proposed right on the heel of abolishing the
wealth tax and then reducing the top income tax and increasing the flat part of our taxation system.
So it could be seen as one more step in making the tax system less progressive than it was before.
And the optics of that are terrible because it is seen that you're asking me to pay for your
luxury. I don't care about the end of the world because I am concerned about the end of the month
and you need to deal with that first. And that's why I think if we want to make any progress on
climate change, we have to couple the two issues and make it very clear that it is not something
that is a luxury taste of rich people and that is going to be paid for higher taxes on poor people.
It is something that we need to collectively achieve and we are going to make it as painless
as possible for the poor people within countries and across countries. Trust is at the core of your
work. The trust of the state in the poor, the trust of the citizens in the government, in the
health system, even in science. And in your work, you show that behavioral change can be managed
through the establishment of trust. So how does that work? How could we do that?
Yes, so one of the big things that ill societies and that has started much before the COVID crisis
is a steady decline in the trust that citizens are for their government. If you look at OECD
countries, the trust in government has gone down and down and down and down. But it's not that
there is general mistrust in everybody. For example, trust in scientists is very high.
Although trust in economists is very low. The politicians and economists are the least trusted
people by both Americans and people in the UK. I think it is true also in France and in continental
Europe. So to understand how to deal with this, we have to understand where it's coming from.
And I think it's coming from the fact that in the public discourse, we tend to emphasize,
and also in research and in economics research particularly, but that's also true in political
science, et cetera. So their university have a role. We tend to blame the governments around
the world for their failure. We talk about corruption, we talk about inefficiency, et
cetera. And we highlight the difference in performance between universities and between
the government and the private sector. But what we forget in this comparison is that governments
intervene precisely when the problem is too hard for the markets. So you think about the
COVID pandemic, for example, suddenly we had governments everywhere in our lives to do things
that the private market would be completely unable of doing. And so the COVID crisis,
I think, gives us a good example, which is in places where it was relatively well managed,
then this could actually provide a boost in trust in government, not necessarily a particular
government, but in government as a project. And I think we saw that in Italy, actually,
where in the municipal election in the last spring, the middle of the COVID crisis, there was much
more vote for parties that were in favor of governing as opposed to pure opposition parties.
And I think the way you build trust in government is by not assuming it from the get-go, not saying
you have to trust me, this is how it is, but by achieving things, succeeding in some projects.
And so you start by doing one project, you succeed in that project, you show you are
capable of delivering, and then you can move on to the next project.
So that relates to the work you do. It's pretty close to your randomized control trials,
which actually show what can be done. Can you describe what they are and to what
extent your approach is different to what other economists do?
So the idea of randomized control trial is now very, very familiar to everybody because
everybody has a full load very closely, the randomized control trial for vaccines, COVID-19.
So what you do in a trial in medicine is you take a sample of people, then you randomly select half
of them, and you give them, say, your new vaccine candidate, and the other half gets a placebo.
And then you compare the outcome. So in this case, whether or not people got sick with COVID or had
to be hospitalized in the vaccinated group and in unvaccinated group. And because the vaccinated
group was randomly selected, you know that if you find a difference, if your sample was large enough,
that has to be due to the vaccine. Now, the idea that we kind of pushed in our lab, and this is
kind of the core of our work in GPAL and in this big movement in development economics, is that
you can do exactly the same thing for social policy. So similarly, you can learn
what works and what doesn't work for, say, suppose you have a vaccine now for COVID,
to reduce the hesitancy in people's willingness to get vaccinated. So you can try different
messages, you can try different messengers, you can do that randomly across different ways of
the population and see what works and what doesn't. So the same technology, the same methodology
works just as well for social policies. Of course, you have to do this work in the field with real
people, so you do it with partners. And you also have to do it on very well identified problems,
and hopefully on problems that are actually pertinent and relevant in the field.
So the difference from the work that people used to do in economics is, first of all,
maybe the focus on narrowly defined questions that can be understood and studied precisely,
and second of all, this willingness to work with partners and get ideas from the field,
as opposed to deriving them from theory. And third, the complete openness in term of the
results you're finding. And fourth, of course, is the statistics machinery and the tools
and understanding, adapting it from other fields and making it work in the context of
economic issues and problems. So what you do leaves politicians little room for excuses,
because inaction can hardly be justified thereafter.
Well, there is always many excuses, too many things. So in particular,
politicians often have to act very quickly, and they also have pressures that are
democratic pressure that leads them to do things rather than others. And those pressures are
important. I'm not saying they should be belittled. But at least what we found in our work is that in
many cases, politicians want to do something. They have a plan in mind, but it leaves a lot
of details to be worked out. And on those details, there are a lot of possibilities,
and we just have no idea. And for those, these randomized controlled trials can be a very
useful way to collaborate with politicians, doing something that is immediately helpful to them
without putting undue pressure. So for example, in the case of vaccines, I really agree that we
should deliver vaccines. But we have uncertainty on should you insist on the private benefits,
for example, versus the fact that you are doing a social good. Do you want to give incentives
like a lottery like they did in the US? Or is that crazy? Will that backfire? And this is the type
of things that unless we try out in the field, we won't know. And where they create a lot of
opportunities to work with government without slowing them down or endangering their bottom
line, but making the programs that they wanted to do anyways work more efficiently.
You describe your work as that of a plumber. Are you working on the demystification of science?
Yeah, so this work that I was talking about, which is working with politicians
to make what they wanted to do work better, that's very much what I describe as plumbing,
which is, you know, there are so many choices we have to make where we really don't,
science is not guiding us. Science is very easy to tell us about what might work or might not.
We get intuition from science, but they tell us nothing very specific or precise about what might
work. And that's where that's where the economics plumbers come. And, of course, I think we still
need the economist scientists to give us big ideas, but we also need the plumbers to help
work with policymakers to look at the details of the program to make them work. And it often makes
all the difference. Often you have a small changes in the way that the program is implemented and it
has a huge issue, a huge effect. For example, to go back to the climate change idea, one thing that
we need to do is to convince people to use smart meters in their house that are going to better
regulate the energy used in a house. And in Sacramento, they did an experiment where
either they install the meters in people's house and then people had to opt out if they didn't
want them, or people had to sign up for the program. So one is an opt out program and one
is an opt in program. So you would think that's like a detail, something that some bureaucrats
probably going to come up with in general is not going to be studied. But it made all the difference
because the people who opt, who have the option to opt out do not opt out. And the people who
have the option to opt in do not opt in. So whatever is a default situation is super sticky and stays.
And then it has impact on energy consumption, especially at the peak, but even in off-peak,
it reduces energy consumption. And it reduced energy consumption much more for people who were
given the thing and had to opt out because they're just more likely to have it.
So this is an example of the plumbing is completely essential to the success of the program.
Well, thank you very much. We're fortunate that you're also going to join us
for the dialogue session later on. So hopefully we can come back to many of those exciting points
later on. We have an absolutely top class panel, and I have now the honor to briefly introduce
the participants of our dialogue session. Professor Pam Fratman is president of the
International Association of Universities. She has an academic background as professor of
neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has extensive experience from academic
leadership and between 2006 and 2017 was rector at the University of Gothenburg. She has worked
in many ways to implement sustainability at her university, and I look forward to learning more
about how she did it. A very warm welcome, Professor Fratman. Professor Peter Andrie-Ald
is president of the German Rector's Conference. He studied German language and literature,
political science, history, and philosophy at Freio-Universität Berlin. He has been a full
professor of modern German literature since 1995, first at Ruhr-Universität-Bohrung later on at the
University of Würzburg, and since 2005 at the Freio-Universität Berlin. He has been the president
of Freio-Universität Berlin for two terms as president. He had a flip chart in his office on
which he wrote a new motto every week, and I look forward to perhaps finding out today which
aphorism accompanies him to this day. Welcome, Professor Ald. Professor Mamoureti Paqeng is
vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town, where she had been serving as deputy vice chancellor
for research and internationalization since January 2017. She has an academic background
as a professor for mathematics education, and in her role she frequently just visits students
unannounced in their accommodations, and I look forward to find out what impresses her most about
these conversations with her students. Welcome, Professor Paqeng. Professor Detlef Stammel is
chair of the World Climate Research Program Joint Scientific Committee and chair of the Cluster
Excellence, Climate, Climatic Change and Society at Hamburg University. He has an academic background
as professor for remote sensing and assimilation and is director of the Center for Earth System
Research and Sustainability. I look forward to find out how he conveys the urgency of climate
change when some of the processes he researches take 10,000 years or even longer to complete.
Thank you very much for joining, Professor Stammel. To begin with, I would like to ask
all panelists for a brief response to Professor Duflo's keynote, and dear Professor Fredman,
which of Professor Duflo's thoughts is of particular importance to your work?
Very good presentation. I like that very much, and what I bring with me is that you so clearly pinpoint
the importance of the behavior of the citizens, because that brings to the educational part that
we have to empower or keep citizens, wherever they work or whatever they do, in the capacity
to be part of sustainable development. So I think that what you're bringing forward is very
important. And unfortunately, the COVID has shown that the inequality when it comes to education
and knowledge creation around the world, we fear and many universities around the world fears that
the inequality will increase. So your pressure on that we have to think about the whole and take
responsibility for the global, for the whole globe, when it comes to knowledge and to support
with all the dimensions. It was very good. And finally, I would say, in surveys, it's clear that
many countries positively has brought more awareness to the knowledge brought by university
and the education and the importance of that. So it has opened doors for a better connection and
better collaboration between the governments and the science. And hopefully, that's something
we can bring forward globally. Thank you very much, Professor Alt. Which aspect is of special
importance to your book? Thank you very much indeed. Since there are so many take home messages,
I have to single but a few. First of all, what struck me the most was the figure top 10 percent
of the emitters are producing 45 percent of words emissions. And I think this is not only a
shared figure, it's also a symbol. And there are many other examples worldwide for such an
imbalance between benefit and disadvantage. And I think this is crucial to our topic.
One major idea which I want to emphasize is the role of the government, which has been also
discussed after the talk a bit. I think it's very important to identify this role as a crucial one,
because if we want to take action, we need the government. But we have to also, as it has been
mentioned, we have to establish trust. And this brings me to a third dimension, which you have
also tackled, the role of science. Science as an advisor, I think we must discuss this a little bit
more in detail, because this is not a given fact. We have distrust in science, increasing distrust.
We have populist parties. We have a strong movement. We have worldwide 30 percent of people,
at least, not trusting in science. And we have to analyze this finding to a certain extent and to
take into account how we can not change this, but make use of the 70 percent who trust in science.
And this is, from my point of view, one major mission of the inspiring lecture
that we are invited to discuss our strategies here in this field, in particular.
Thank you very much, Professor Parkeng. What struck you most?
Thank you very much, Professor Daflo, for the lecture. Very interesting, very inspiring.
I was, I got interested in the point that you made about the highest polluters,
the highest polluters being the rich countries. And of course, your view about what needs to be done,
but also the fact that the world has not shown a great generosity to the poor countries during
COVID-19 and the COVID-19 crisis. And so this brought me to the question about what is,
what is development? What's the role of development in having the rich countries polluting more?
What do the poor countries aspire to? For me, it seems as if, whilst we are dealing with the
problem of climate change and we want to solve that, at the same time, there are behaviors that
we are reproducing because that's what's seen as development. And that's not only in terms of
countries, it's in terms of countries, in terms of individuals, but also in terms of what young
people aspire towards. And it seems to me that we've got to start critiquing more and more
what is development? What does it mean to improve the material conditions of people? Is that the
only way to do it? Or is there a sustainable way of doing that improvement? But also,
when we talk about the rich countries being generous to the poor, I mean, in a way,
living in the continent of Africa, as much as I agree with that, it makes me a little uncomfortable
because in a way, we don't also critique how the West impoverished poor countries and perhaps
what's their responsibility. So it is not charity that the poor countries are expecting
its responsibility because it's not only through coloniality that the poor countries were
impoverished, but also through the idea of development in the way it is perpetuating
in poor countries. And yeah, I mean, it made me think in that way, the role of coloniality
and the role of development in this and the fact that thinking about poor countries and helping
them should not be sold as charity, but as a responsibility of the wealthy countries because
they impoverished the poor countries. Thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Stama. As a
researcher, you deal intensively with the consequences of climate change. Which of
Professor Duflo's approaches particularly surprised you? Well, there are a couple of things that one
has to say for this. First of all, thank you very much for this talk, which I really enjoyed in all
this aspect. Several things have been already said, but I do want to repeat a few. First of all,
your statement about climate change and dealing with it. I completely agree this is not just a
technological answer that we can expect or that we can use to remedy the problems. It has to be
more, it has to be in particular a transformation of society. And you actually touched on this in
various aspects. And this transformation definitely relates to the way of spending
energy, spending, in fact, producing CO2 emission. It has to deal also with other aspects.
And to some extent, the consumption pattern that you already suggested that is to some extent
responsible for a lot of the emissions. So summarizing this, I completely agree it has
to be a total approach. It has to deal with technology development, but it also has to involve
a really fundamental transformation of society. Now, a few more things. First of all, what I
really was struck by a statement on one of your slides is that we need to act now to prevent
climate change. And I think this is probably not quite correct because I would actually phrase it,
we have to act now to limit climate change. Climate change is already ongoing. We actually
have already a one degree warming since the industrial age started. We are, after Paris 2015,
after COP21, we are dealing with possibilities or attempts to limit this to possibly ideally 1.5
degree, which is still half a degree more than what we have already, or two degree, which would
be twice of what we received already. And I think it's very important for society to realize that
climate change is already ongoing and that we, as a society, we have to deal with consequences of
climate change already. So this is nothing that will come at some point. It's already to some
extent here and it will come over the years to come. And to limit, for instance, climate change
to 1.5 degree, it really requires net decarbonization by 2050. And otherwise, we have to
pull the carbon out. And I think that society has to realize, also the politicians, it's nothing we
can wait for. We have to act now to limit it and not to not have climate change. And one of the
things I would like to add is that you dealt with climate change in terms of temperature,
which actually is a number that is most often used. You, in fact, made this very interesting
statement, water is not climate change, which probably relates to the water consumption to
some extent. But climate change actually will be associated with changes of available water.
And I think it's not just temperature rise. It's not just heat waves. Actually, it's a lot of
water shortage that we anticipate and we and the politicians have to deal with this.
Some people actually said at some point in a few years, we will fight wars, not for oil,
but for water. Maybe I'll leave it here. Well, thank you very much to all of you.
We're now going to start our dialogue session and we're going to proceed in three steps. We're going
to first take a closer look at the status quo, then going to look at the agents of change and
the things that are needed to slow down climate change, and in a third step, turning to universities
and their role. Professor Duflo, you described the status quo in your book with the words,
inequality is exploding, environmental catastrophes and global policy disasters loom.
That sounds not too optimistic.
That's a glass. That's the half emptiness of the glass. First of all, let me say that I
agree with absolutely all of the comments that were made, in particular with the last points,
both about the fact that we are now talking about limiting and mitigating climate change,
not avoiding it. In fact, the mitigation point is particularly important for poor countries
because climate change is happening and it's going to be affecting the poor countries the most,
in particular, the water consequences that you mentioned. The status quo, as these comments
assign, is just not acceptable. Related to the comments that was made by Dr. Stammer,
it is not acceptable in particular for what it is doing to poor countries.
There are any number of reasons why I completely agree with you that the proportional sharing of
the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change is not charity, it's basic responsibility.
Without even mentioning the history, and we can add the history to that, but even in the present,
because of the fact that the emissions are mainly the product of the consumption of the poor
rich countries. I think there is no doubt in my mind that this has nothing to do with charity.
Similarly, there is no doubt in my mind that having a fair or distribution system within
country to deal with the exploding inequality has nothing to do with charity. It has to do with
basic rules of functioning in society. To me, the two things are connected.
Unfortunately, right now, when we are thinking about or when politicians are talking about
solidarity, they are mostly talking about solidarity within countries. The idea that you
would need to have something like the worldwide progressive tax system is a little bit absent
from the conversation. But I don't think we should still have it in the back of our mind
as what we should aspire to, at least in what concerns the carbon taxation,
not as a matter of charity, just as a matter of basic responsibility of today.
Then on top of that, we can add the history, including the history of emission.
And then plus what you talked about, which is the history of colonization and the consequences
of the development model. Maybe we can discuss the development model at another point in the
conversation. I agree with you as well that this is also something we need to think about, that
they don't need to... countries which haven't gone our funny path don't need to go there necessarily.
We received a question from the audience that relates to this. How do you think a reconciliation
between the polluters, which do not fear the climate change as much and the part of the world
who are not responsible for climate change but suffer disproportionately high could look like?
Who would like to answer that question or share an idea on that?
I don't have a solution, but I think that when we're talking about these
large and big issues, we have to remember that the large proportions of the citizens in any
country, it's not just the poor countries, in any countries, is not on the same platform.
You are talking to people who are not equipped with the knowledge and not the understanding.
We don't have governments which actually explain if they are doing something. So
for me, it's coming back to have people understanding what's going on, taking their
own decisions, taking their own views on this, because we cannot just put that collectively
on people within your country or globally.
Professor Stama, aren't we dealing with at least three dilemmas? Firstly, many of the results
you describe will only become virulent in decades or even centuries. And secondly,
the nation state alone does not have the opportunity to curb climate change because
obviously it's a global development. And thirdly, the people who suffer most
from the consequences, as we just heard, have the least and also have contributed least to
climate change. How can we nevertheless get people to rethink and change their behavior?
Well, I guess there are a couple of things for this. First of all, it is not that long that we
actually feel climate change. I mean, for instance, right now we already see the consequences. We see
the changes over the North Pole, ice reduction, throwing of permafrost, changes in precipitation
pattern, even in Germany. I mean, basically, think about the last couple of summers,
that is not a proof that this is already climate change. But it is not just sort of far away and
it's also not far away in time. And we just have to look at it and we have to also sort of
look at the numbers, to some extent the projections. So in our science field, we do
work with projections. I'm not saying predictions, but there is information that we can trust and we
have to just take it into account. And so of course, the question about the redistribution
is a very important one. But I would come back to the responsibility that we all have on the global
scale and also the fact that we more and more deal actually with all these discussions and
consequences in international networks. And so in fact, on the UN level, on various different
levels, where we really have to have a much stronger dialogue about the consequences and
take this into account. But I think it's important that, I mean, this notion that you might have
alluded to, sort of this will happen in a thousand years or so, this is not true. There's
already a lot ongoing and over the next decades, we will see even more and we just have to take
this into account. Professor Duflo, what do you say when someone tells you, but that's no use,
why should I give up something when other countries are emitting more carbon dioxide than ever before?
Well, are you meeting someone in a poor country or someone in a rich country?
In a rich country. I think that we need to be, that's what I was trying to say, which is we need
to give people credit for not be too pessimistic about people's preferences. I think there is a
model of humans that has sort of imposed itself as someone who are mainly motivated by wanting
to consume always more things. That's a model that of course is pushed on us by advertising,
that is pushed on us by others. And we've sort of come to accept as the main model of
how human behave or how they should behave. And I think that relates to the point about the model
of development that is then superimposed on the poorer countries, which might otherwise have
chosen something else. And that's not helped by media, social media and the like. But in fact,
in reality, people are not so, the preferences of people are not so firmly established. And in
particular, they are not so one dimensional. What we are finding across the research sociologists,
psychologists, is that people are motivated by so many other things than money and consumption.
And in particular, they're mostly motivated by dignity. And the sense of what constitutes
dignity is something that is essentially socially determined by the group in which you
live. And the result of that is that people might today not have any opinion about a Bangladeshi
whose town is going to be swallowed by water within the next decade because the water levels
are rising. But the fact that they don't have an opinion about this person now doesn't mean that
they can't form one if we are educating them. And that goes to the point that was made first
about the critical role of education. I think, for example, that the younger cohort, the one that
are striking falling great at Sunberg on Friday for climate, they have a very different opinion.
And they actually have in their mind, they have an opinion about the person in Bangladesh who
livelihoods is affected. And we need to build on that. And conversely, I don't think it is necessarily
true that people always think they need to have more. They only think they need to have more
either because they are extremely poor and they really don't have enough for everyday survival.
But beyond a level, maybe they think they have to have more because they have been told to think
that this is how you show your worth. And if we collectively managed to rewrite the rule of
engagement and competition between people, then we might get very different results. And that kind
of relates to the point that was made about what's the right model of development. But what is true
for the West vis-a-vis African countries, it also true for the richer vis-a-vis the poor people
in rich countries. What is dignity? What is a life worth living? It is not necessarily a
life for consumer. And that's not me saying that. It's a lot of people thinking that. But being a
little bit reluctant to act on it because they're thinking that's not what they're required to think.
Professor Paquette, I saw you nodding. How can we change habits successfully from your experience?
What needs to be done? Well, I think Professor Duflo introduced an important concept of dignity.
But perhaps to change habits, you need involvement at every level of society. I mean, you need,
of course, the policy level, but I would say even at the lowest level in the media. And as Professor
Duflo was talking, I thought the poorer the people are, the more they focus on personal
sustainability rather than environmental sustainability. And I see it here that
you know, there isn't much concern about the environment if I'm struggling for the next meal.
If it means I must take out a key, that's going to help me. That's what I'm going to do or
whatever. So I think the media is very powerful and particularly in spaces where there is not
much trust in governments. So you need multiple voices. You need the voices in education. So I
would say curricula in basic education should have as a matter of rule environmental sustainability
as part of the curricula embedded in, even if it's not taught as a standalone subject, but embedded
in everything that students learn so that you don't have to go find it elsewhere. But I also
think when you look at, I mean, we're talking about, can we change the model of development?
And perhaps the question is, how does a young poor person in a rural village in Kenya or South Africa,
how do they get to think that being wealthy and comfortable is driving a big Porsche car that
sounds a particular way? It's because they see the movies and so on. Is it possible that we can have
some roles in whether it's sitcoms or whatever movies, that foreground environmental
sustainability in a very good way, not in a way that says, if you do this, then it means you're
going to suffer or whatever. That's not the idea. But I think we've got to get the message through
many different platforms that particularly young people can take up that message.
We want to see that message trending on social media. You want to see that message
young people. I mean, in South Africa today, it is much, if you wanted to see a shutdown
against unemployed graduates or against social grants, the crowd will be much bigger.
But if you have a march that's looking at this disinvesting from first of all companies,
it will be very small because sometimes the poorest of the poor do not believe that that's
their cause. They might just stand up to fight for land, whether they know how to wet the land
or not. But the idea is the land was taken from our forefathers. So we stand up and go fight
for land or for whatever, but not necessarily to go fight that the wealthy are polluting a village
or a township. And I think if we embed the message very strongly in education, in many spaces,
we'll hear young people, even in impoverished countries, standing up, their voices being heard
as much as they are heard when they are fighting for free university education or for anti-colonial
marches or something like that. I would like to see that message taken up, particularly by
young people in that way, that they refuse to eat in a dining hall at university that's got lots of
plastic. And they say, this is not how we want it to happen. Can we get drinks in a particular way?
I mean, you want that as much as you want a top down message, you want it to come bottom up where
people can own it. So education is crucial, knowledge is crucial, media literacy is crucial.
But when we're talking about science, we also obviously have to talk about the communication
of science. How can we get through and how can science be influential with everything the
results show? Professor Alt, coming back to one point you mentioned beforehand, how political
should science be or is science allowed to do politics itself? Or should it maybe do politics?
Yes, it is. It should be aware of fact that advising to the broader public, be it the
general society or politicians with certain responsibilities, is at least implicitly
touching and covering the field of political action. And that is the political mission of
science. It does not mean that they should have political goals, but they should be aware
of the consequences their advice could have. And I think we can observe this in the most recent
processes of Covid-19. Many outstanding researchers advising to their respective governments
have learned how complex these consequences can be and how complex also the entanglement
of science with politics is if they are entering this stage. And I think we have to do
more and to put our efforts on qualifying. You junior researchers, senior researchers,
to be more aware that communicating science means not only to explain facts,
it's much more than that. It is also about attitudes, about processes. I think explaining
science means only to focus on certain concrete figures. It must be also about informing the
process, showing that science is an attitude, a dynamic attitude, that there is not one
undividable choose, that we are not talking about religion, that we are talking about belief,
that we are talking about racial rationality, and that includes also different perspectives.
And the enrichment of the word by informed science is that we learn more about these
perspectives. And that is very important, both to the broader society, to the so-called non-experts,
but also important in relation to our politicians. And also, politicians have to learn that there
might not be one message which could be derived from science. There are many. And that in the end,
they take the decision and they have the responsibility to put certain priorities.
And I think this is the holistic approach which had been described already. Coming up with
early education, showing young people what science can do and what science is all about,
and then going on, giving insight into processes, showing how science is a permanent process. This
I think is very important. And this also brings us to this kind of self-reflection of responsibility
we all need in this whole process. We need awareness of the consequences we are doing.
This is included in the word responsibility. And this is the best possible world driven by science
and science communication. We need people who have an informed trust in science, not a trust
this is a kind of religious attitude. We need information, informed trust. And this is
important. So that means that trust is not an aim by itself because we do not want blind trust,
but people are informed enough to trust. Is that what you say? Definitely. That's the goal.
And that should be launched very early, at a very early stage on the school level. And I think
we have to completely reshape our strategies in communicating science. So we have done a lot here,
made enormous progress in establishing platforms for open science. That means that this is a
process which is not a one way or a dead end street. This is also including the so-called
non-experts and that critical answers can be very helpful also for the experts. So we have to
interact on an eye level and we have also interacted in an open manner. And open science
is a very important tool here to establish this kind of informed trust I've described before.
Professor Fredman, there is one question from the audience dealing with the role of science and
politics. Do we not need to speak out clearly that everybody, especially in the rich countries,
have to decrease their own CO2 footprint? Politicians do not dare to do this. How can
scientists and universities be more successful in influencing the public and take action?
I think that one very important thing is what was mentioned recently and that was how do we inform
societies? How do we connect? What do we bring to the societies? And that comes back to the
tradition of universities that we have a merit system which is not communication of science and
communication of knowledge and I think that we have to think about that for the future. But
bringing in the sustainability into education and research, that is a way forward.
I would like to say that the changes were made at the University of Gothenburg. We were
environment certified already in the beginning of 2000 and the strong driving force as Professor
said was the young people, was the students. They were really the strong working force or driving
forces and they are already out there in the market. They are politicians today. They are
leaders of the big companies. So I think that through the universities we really have a
responsibility but we also have to build up better communication. If we want to have
higher education and education in general as a public good, we need citizens to support. Otherwise
we don't get the governments to support education in the way it should be and as a public good.
And that is a concern in many countries and also within Europe we have that concern. So
we need to bring out what we have and I think that the young people is really the strong force we
have forward. They are thinking differently. They are very keen on learning and maybe also
we should say we should not say just climate change. We should think about sustainability
because these young people think of sustainability all the different perspectives and we cannot pick
up just one of those. Professor Stama, that sounds quite optimistic but how can we publicly
promote the tolerance of ambiguity instead of allowing it to be used by populists
all over the world for their own purposes?
Could you unmute please? Sorry, the ambiguity question is a very important one and to some
extent it comes back to how do we communicate science. For instance, I'm involved in sea level
research and there are planners who look into the literature and they see a new number and then they
think okay now I have to change my plans for instance for San Francisco Harbor. I think
communicating that a part of science is a discourse that not just one paper is the truth that we
actually have to have several studies coming to some conclusions I think will easily take out the
ambiguity to really communicate the discourse that we have part of science to come to a conclusion
and an answer and I think if this is communicated in the right way I think a lot of the ambiguity
will be taken out although I'm always a belief that not all the arguments from people who don't
believe for instance in climate change can be removed this way there there's a lot of convincing
necessary but at least a better communication of what we know and what we don't know and including
uncertainties will be a very important part of that and also in communicating climate change
information and insight. We're talking about politics instrumentalizing science. Professor
Duflo in an interview last year you said that populists make people no longer feel like losers
but as victims. How does that relate to what we just debated about?
Yeah so the the concern with climate change and in particular the way that it's been politicized
specifically in the U.S. but there is also some of that in continental Europe as well
is that people were told that by populists that basically they are trying to remove
and to change the way of life that you have had and
maybe sometimes implying that this was not about an objective but this was because of some
fundamental opposition that the other side the you know liberals or what have you have against
this way of life and unfortunately there was in in the communication and this goes back to the
point was made about the communication of science. There is always a little bit of a risk of being
holier than thou and say look if you it's my way or the highway I am correct and you are wrong and
I am educated and you are not so you have to listen to what I am saying and unfortunately
for people who are already feeling fragileized for example because they are suffering economically
the people who are the most dependent on for example on coal production in the U.S. are people
who are living in the Appalachia where their jobs are going anyways climate change or policy or not
those jobs are disappearing because of automation because of trade because of the fact that no
matter what we do coal is becoming more expensive compared to wind and solar and other type of energy
and when you have people who have who are fragileized they also live in a world where
they think that the first of all that the the measure of success the yardstick of success
is how much money you're making and they also live of a world where they thought that
the measure of success is their children can do better than themselves and they thought that
this is what the American dream you know offers to people and they still believe in it
only they see that it doesn't apply to them and they're right because it's just not there anymore
and we haven't been transparent about that neither the scientists nor the politicians have been
transparent about the fact that these dreams of social mobility they've just disappeared
and people still believe in it but they see that they are not moving they are not going anywhere
their children might not do better than them and they have a choice between thinking is it my fault
and like am I a loser am I incapable or did someone do that to me now put yourself in this
situation of course you would want to believe that someone did that to you and then who is that
these are the people who are saying that what do you do your line of work is not legitimate or you
you're living in industry that shouldn't be there and then once the conversation is set up in these
terms it's just very very difficult to have it which is why again I think that we can't
undo the appeal of a message that is sort of an anti-sustainability populist without a more
popular or proper message that is also goes with acknowledging the the necessity of changing even
our view of what is a good life it's like you've been sold a bit of bill of goods that's not you
know that's not a good life we're talking about universities and and science you're right that we
the economists are often too wrapped up in our models and our methods and sometimes forget
where science ends and ideology begins professor stammer is that also true for other disciplines
including your own um no I don't think so um and and it probably depends a little bit on on the
field itself um the I think the important part is to understand the way science is working
as I alluded to before um that there is not one single answer that we have to
investigate things from various different sides but um the uh the I think in in natural science
at least we do have uh physical laws um that determine things and and that we in fact use
for instance for climate projections and and and and and um matters like this um it might be I mean
for economy um we just have heard uh professor duflo saying um what what people believe um and
and so there I think there are different fields where maybe different bases are for for the
work but in general I would not say this is true for my field thank you thank you we already have
to start with the final round unfortunately with regard to the time I would like to ask you for a
comparison uh professor duflo sees her role and and that of economics as that of a plumber
what what can your job be described to in relation to the issue of of climate change
and sustainability I would be grateful for concise answers professor alt what what craft
do you practice well it's more assured than it is a fact um I think we should act as role models
which um includes not only integrating sustainability issues in our curricula which is the
case as we've learned from um the study of professor mccowen um which will be presented
tomorrow um but we have also to act as role models which means that universities have a key role to
um directly reducing energy consumption which is not easy because they are complex tankers and
large systems um with uh energy um consuming main frames as infrastructure which is costly
and also um energy intensive and if universities can um act as role models here in directly um
reaching um carbon neutrality in a couple of years in reducing um traveling rates um which we have
done the last 15 months and we've learned um that our system did not collapse um then we can be
proud of us and then we can really um require this um expectation that we are a good example
for um the world so we should not only contribute to understanding the process and to um operationalizing
theoretical solutions but we should also be a role model by going forward in um finding good ways to
reduce uh emission thank you very much professor fretman what would your comparison be
yeah i will start where you ended and that is uh we should be the uh living the values within
the universities otherwise we are not good our own models and i have an example from my own
university and that was to bring down the emission and the energy consumption and when the researchers
realized that they could be part of they could gain money from what they got from funding and
use that for research instead of paying for for energy and we measure that all the time every year
and the students also were in part of this so i think that we have to be that model but i would
like to add and that is uh universities has to see that we work in uh with local relevance we have to
provide uh knowledge and education and competence locally but we always have to be those saying
that we have a global responsibility we are those who should be there for capacitor buildings in all
parts of the world otherwise we will not reach sustainable development goals
thank you very much professor perking what would your comparison be
um i i think mine would be a pottery i think um as university leaders i mean students come to us
already grown they're 18 it's almost like you're getting clay already mixed and all you need to do
is to shape it um and you shape it so this what what comes out of that depends on the quality of
the clay and the quality of the hands so we offer the hands and the time that that that we we spend
on shaping that clay um but of course if the quality of the clay is not that good there's
there's something that that can come out of it of course you you do something to the clay you heat
it and then it will come out dry but but we don't get we don't start the clay from the beginning
but in so doing i'm saying we we you know we we we try to change mindsets of students
but we also try to give leadership not only to our students now but also to the future
for us as a leading university we see decisions that we make about um environmental sustainability
not only is relevant to us but also to other universities who look at us and think that's
the way to go so when we say we aim to become a net zero carbon not net zero carbon campus
by a particular date and when we work on on disinvesting in fossil fuels and it's hard and
we we see ourselves again in that process of clay we're not we can't you know we we can be we can
be an exemplar of what kind of vase can come out of this clay thank you thank you very much
professor stama what would your comparison be yeah actually i i would agree actually with
whatever had been said already um and to some extent we are plumbers by in fact understanding
the system and for understanding feedbacks and connections but i like in particular the um
what uh professor ban king just said about the um creating the leadership creating the trust
creating in fact the people who understand what we do and what we what we know and how we
communicate this and and for me i mean of course you can can call it pottery or something else but
really forming um the leadership generation that for instance in gertenburg then actually or
somewhere else steps in and and carry this forward and for me this is a very important part and maybe
pottery is is a good way of of designing it or calling it and and i personally as as a as a
professor at the university do see this in fact as a very important part of our world of our work
that we really kind of bring this information forward into the next generation and generate
people who can take actually the torch and lead it forward thank you well thank you very much
professor duplo thank you very much for not only the plumbing analogy but foremost for your
inspiring speech and attendance and it gave us so many impulses thank you very much many thanks to
you professor stammer professor pakeng professor ayat professor fradman for taking the time for
this i think very lively discussion which could go on but unfortunately can't i'm sure all of you
would hear loud applause now if we were sitting next to each other which we are not unfortunately
thank you very much for your commitment your open and insightful debate and it was a pleasure
and an honor i would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who makes the guc possible many
thanks to professor lenson and the university of homburg i would also like to thank the karber
foundation and the german rector's conference for their indispensable support for this event
and above all many thanks to all the many people who have contributed to the fact that this event
has been able to take place so smoothly despite such very special conditions their work is
invaluable to all of you who will be attending the guc in the next couple of days i wish you
an exciting conference take advantage of the privilege of gathering and sharing and to you
ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for your interest i hope we have been able to make a small
contribution to entering into a conversation and we started today with professor duflo's keynote
and let me close with a quote from her democracy can live with dissent as long as there is respect
on both sides but respect demands some understanding i hope we could make a small contribution
to better understand climate change sustainability and for most universities role for both
thank you very much and have a nice evening bye bye