Max Bearak: Why are the rich failing the poor on climate change?

In international climate negotiations, lower-income countries have consistently urged high-income countries to provide substantial financial assistance to support mitigation and adaptation efforts. Meanwhile, the United States continues to take actions that hinder the global energy transition.

In this lecture, New York Times climate reporter Max Bearak will discuss his reporting on how wealthy nations – and the world's most powerful companies – are failing poorer countries in climate politics and policy. He will examine how financial commitments from governments and private sector leaders have fallen short, deepening global inequalities in climate resilience. Drawing on his extensive coverage, he will explore the political and economic forces shaping international climate negotiations, energy policies, and emerging strategies to curb greenhouse gas emissions. 

The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion with economists Rohini Pande and Nicholas Ryan, both of whom have conducted research that has influenced environmental policy in lower-income countries, and historian Sunil Amrith, author of The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years

• Max Bearak is a reporter for The New York Times, covering energy politics, international climate negotiations, and innovative approaches to emissions reduction. 
• Sunil Amrith is the Henry R. Luce Director of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History, Yale University, and Professor at Yale School of the Environment. He is the author of five books that put Asia at the heart of global history and show how the movement of people has changed the planet.
• Rohini Pande is the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics as well as the Director of the Economic Growth Center, and Faculty Director of Inclusion Economics, Yale University. One strand of her research examines how institutions shape environmental advantage in lower-income countries. In her Science Magazine column, she explores topics such as environmental justice and carbon markets.
• Nicholas Ryan is an Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University. He studies energy markets and environmental regulation in developing countries – in particular, the effect of power grid capacity on electricity prices, how environmental regulation can be designed to abate pollution at low social cost, and the adoption and pricing of renewable energy.