We will go ahead and get started. The Environmental EnergyStudy Institute thank you for joining us back i hope everybody got all the candy. Thank you for joining us this morning we have a wonderful panel and will be learning about the Global Commission of a global call for leadership. The urgency of Climate Change may feel more acute but the issue of Climate Change has been with us for decades. Esi stated in 1988 addressing Climate Change is a moral imperative. Many scientists m Public Policy experts have been working on the issue proposing solutions i hope what were actually seeing his momentum to act there is some evidence this is the case last week i testified before the Senate Energy committee that probably would not have been the case a few years ago in Speaker Pelosi and the House Select Committee is another example. As we know now that inaction on Climate Change makes it harder and harder to achieve. We have to act now to contribute to that momentum constantly reinforce it. So we can inform policymakers of the best and latest data and best practices to share Lessons Learned to help them understand the urgency to make meaningful progress to address Climate Change. All we need to do is start. This Morning Panel is special we have many resources to think and the efi true champion to help moderate. Focusing research on the interface of science and policy principally on issues related to mitigation at the National International level at the school of Public Health in michigan in school Public Policy university of maryland ran a division of the White House Office of science and Technology Policy and lectured on every continent and more than 20 countries i wonder how many rooms in the Rayburn Office building. [laughter] most importantly a member of efi distinguish board of directors and we could not do the work we do without her guidance and leadership so i will turn it over to you. Thank you very much. Good morning i am happy to be on the efi board to advise the commission on adaptation. Let me set the stage. We call it Global Commission adaptation report because coping with the changes that are already apparent from Climate Change is urgent and i word argue we already have delayed so time is of the essence. With that adaptation with half of my life ago working for the Congress Office of Technology Assessment i led the first and only report congress ever asked for on adaptation which included water coast and agriculture. In the second on right was the wetland in the forest in the parks. That was requested by three committees Science Based Technology environment and public worse and one works in transportation so its interesting 27 years ago congress was is already thinking adaptation may be important. The Un Commission on Sustainable Development issued a report 2007 and the World Bank Commission the World Development report focusing for the first time on Climate Change and both concluded then we knew enough to say in 1992 that passed does not prologue and it alters the baselines that planning that we have done over the last 100 years will not work in most impacts will be negative and coastal ecosystems will be challenged in every region of the globe to develop in developed countries prickle that enhance preparedness Response Strategy should be a global priority. The mitigation and adaptation that becomes less effective the faster the pace and total change of Climate Change. So its fitting two of the three commissioners of the Global Commission on adaptation asked for these reports are now serving on the Global Commission and adaptation. From the world bank doing the World Development report and then also being at the un joining forces with bill gates this year so depending on how you count this it took 27 years to get a real call on adaptatio adaptation. And as you know the Paris Agreement by 195 countries if fully implemented would put us on the blue line well past the level that is called for in the paris accord well above the industrial level at least three. Three. It will be hard to cope with that. So all the science and the Intergovernmental Panel on the Climate Change report putting that into one graph here it is. What you can see by the length of the orange bar that already nearterm risk is significant but if we move to degrees or 4 degrees c it gets much more risky. Now proactive adaptation can lockbox some of that risk and thats the great part especially into degree case that adaptation at 4 degrees is less effective and much more costly as you head toward greater change essentially we cannot adapt our way out of a 4degree world. And at the temperatures we have already reached that is not insignificant we are seeing these test ranges shifting north like west nile virus and then moving up into canada and extreme events like the fires disrupting supply chain and causing great pain and then to reiterate the climate assessments that was mandated by the Global Change act of 1990 and we are all very pleased legislation on resilience is emerging on the congress. Natural catastrophes have been increasing. This shows the number of weatherrelated disasters the floods are blue the drought of heat and fire are red. You can see in the mid eighties the number of catastrophes was 200 globally now is 600 and as you know last year alone the fires in california cost 24 billion. In 2017 all of these events cost 312 billion. That is real money we are losin losing. Also more powerful tropical storms. These are just the record setters of the strongest irma and harvey didnt even make it for being the largest and strongest but rainfall was a record of rainfall at 8 inches but irma was the longest endurance. And all of these have happened since 2012. One of the most important changes of science base is this. We say we cant attribute any single event to Climate Change but science has advanced to the point this is no longer true as the blanket statement and that is from her own very distinguished National Academy of sciences. The ability to attribute Climate Change and extreme events is a big breakthrough in science. Just to give you one example the attribution of Climate Change the 2 feet of rain in 2016 in louisiana Climate Change increase the odds of getting 2 feet of rain by 40 percent. Thats a powerful statement. The temperature increase to 1 degree already we are seeing an increase of pain and suffering and cost in fact in the analysis of the extreme events of last year 21 out of 27 were seen to have a clearly increased probability from Climate Change they made those events more likely. Every sector is affected by these ongoing temperatures with the Sea Level Rise. So the Energy Sector is in our mind with lower levels wildfires affects electricity supply. And the power plants in the midwest or sometimes flooded water limits reduce productivity with reduced ability to send cold out rivers the storms are disrupting the Distribution Systems in the cooling water intake could be too hot depending on the weather. These all bring home that frequency and intensity of heat wave are flooding and hurricane hurricanes. Houston had three, 500 year events in three years. Were going to have to change the definition of a 500 year event. Passed is not prologue. And the fire area has doubled since 1984 the area of fires in the us and the burn total and the combined fires in 2017 and 2018 were 40 billion and from her own military two thirds of installations threatened by Climate Change in the next 20 years. Not 2100. So we know there is a lot of infrastructure in the path of storm surge and rising sea leve level. And this Risky Business brought it home after super storm sandy wake up call higher storm level storm surge increase the annual cost along the eastern seaboard by three and a half million in the next decade. By 2100, that number just in those regions could be as high as 507 billion. Investors are sounding the alarm calling for risk disclosure. This was amplified at the un Climate Summit last month. The World Economic forum at davos said Climate Change is the biggest risk to business and now pg e has the first s p 500 Climate Energy the time to act is now the Adaptation Commission they are desperately needed we can delay and pay or plan and prosper. Let me introduce the first of our three distinguished speakers to tell us about the Global Commission on adaptation and its findings. First we had the executive Vice President and managing director of World Resources institute. Before that director of the nonprofit and also served at as a world economist working on watershed and Rural Development projects in asia and latin america and the overall lead for the Global Commission on adaptations. Good morning everyone. I have been looking at this issue the past couple years very carefully and still have so much more to learn. Thank you for that lovely opening. First i suspect what is on the minds of the people the issue we are here for includes baseball with the Washington Nationals. Just to bring these together for a moment i dont know if you saw the Washington Post a couple days ago. An interesting article about Climate Change and baseball stadiums. And how we will need to reimagine how we build stadiums for sports in light of Climate Change. That is something i thought was particularly interesting in light of where we are today. Starting with a short video that says a word or two about adaptation. [inaudible conversations] maybe you can read along left left the unprecedented Climate Change it is a huge threat. 2100 expected more than half are at risk. By 2120 percent of the streets of Lower Manhattan to be subject to title mitigation and Sea Level Rise with extreme heat coastal defenses ins are stressed and then how to bounce back quickly so this is just a little bit so with adaptation if we spend a little time preparing videos from all over the world those that are on the front line and what it means to adapt. What i will do today is take a few minutes to talk about the Global Commission on adaptation and those findings released a couple months ago and then my colleagues will go deeper into what this means for the United States on a couple of issues with Climate Disclosure so lets start you saw the two main objectives one as alluded to talks about adaptation that people have been talking about but not nearly as much leadership and resources to put on this despite the fact quite recently this was the top risk seed by major ceos and annual survey each year. The second wasnt just to Elevate Disability but to mobilize action we want this to lead to whirl real world change on the ground setting this up for people all over the world ministers and mayors in the republican mayor of miami and a wide range of partners that were part of the overall effort the commission was launched one year ago in the netherlands because they mention the last year was trying to set the agenda for what needed to happen with the adaptation next year is translating that report into recommendations. In the point is that we receive a lot of reports talking about the problem Climate Change may create but not a systematic approach to talk about how does the world respond into building resilience and that is what we are aiming to do. There are five messages the report put forward first is about the human imperative of adaptation and second is to rethink the economics of investing in adaptation and the third is to say even with good economics we are not getting what we want to see because the barriers are in the way we need to see the revolution to understand to plan and finance to scale up and create the level of adaptation. The fourth is how we apply that to key economic systems and what that means and fifth is how we stimulate and promote that in the coming year and jumpstart the whole agenda. So the first point on adaptation is a human imperative. Communities and countries that often take the lease to generate the problem will suffer the most but also climate will spare no one. So just to give a couple of numbers we anticipate over 100 Million People around the world will fall back into poverty by 2030 if no action is taken. We anticipate the yield of the major crop could fall up to 30 percent with massive implications for livelihoods. Over 1 trillion per year of damages would take place around the world by 2050. But the real tragedy women, future generations will suffer the most so this is an issue that we know very much exacerbates quality in a much more devastating way. That said we have the argument that adaptation invested in resilience makes good economic sense with a wider range of actions with the returns on developing Early Warning systems with agricultural Crop Production and mangroves are other solutions and what we found every dollar we invested in these adaptations could generate for a five dollars in net economic benefit so this is a significant finding to suggest actually that countries and communities and Companies Make good economic sense for resilience further substantiated by a number of us studies that had similar conclusions. Why is that . Using another baseball example with a picture you may recall the Washington Nationals park which is the only major sports stadium in the country that is leed certified. They actually put nature to work in the stadium explaining the economics why it makes so much sense with three roofs and trees in the stadium that helps with a lot of rain and absorbs the storm water runoff and deal with extreme heat hot days in the summer watching baseball helps to cool the temperature down. Thats why this makes good sense but in addition there are two other major benefits to these investments. A white roof, grass and shrubs on the roof their electricity bills are less they dont have to cool the building nearly as much. There is good economic benefit spec on top of that the aesthetics, it looks nice and recreational benefits that people commoditize and that Still Matters to avoid the losses in the economic benefits are in part of what generates these returns. The third finding is despite these returns we dont see the uptick we would expect because a number of barriers get in the way. Often times climate risk is invisible. We find it very difficult to respond to climate risk because that collaborates between different departments within government and Different Levels of government and federal state with collaboration between public and private sector so that gets in the way of these efforts. We also see people dont really appreciate the risk of tomorrow with a tape make decisions today they recognize the Financial System isnt wired to support the upfront cost associated in investing with resilience. There is a power issue here that those that feel the greatest impact have the least in political voice. This get that why we dont see the scale. So in order to trust the barriers we make an argument of how we understand climate risk and respond to it or integrate climate risk into a public and private decisionmaking and into the Financial Sector to channel those public and private flows. So when we take that, we apply that to the food sector in infrastructure and Early Warning systems and soluti