Wider Civil Service Events

Date: 12 April 2024, 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Venue: Wolfson Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building, 54 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London School of Economics and Political Science, WC2A 3LJ

Register in advance here

Lecturer: Todd Stern Todd Stern was “a leading architect of the Obama administration’s international climate change strategy,” according to Politico. Todd was appointed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the position of U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change where he led talks at the United Nations climate change conferences and smaller sessions. He was the chief U.S. negotiator of the Paris Climate Agreement. Todd previously served in the Clinton administration as Assistant to the President and as Staff Secretary in the White House from 1993 to 1998, during which time he also acted as the senior White House negotiator for the Kyoto Protocol and Buenos Aires negotiations.

Chair and discussant: Professor Lord Nicholas Stern Nicholas Stern was Second Permanent Secretary to Her Majesty’s Treasury from 2003-2005; Director of Policy and Research for the Prime Minister’s Commission for Africa from 2004-2005; Head of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in 2006; and Head of the Government Economic Service from 2003-2007.

He was knighted for services to economics in 2004, made a cross-bench life peer as Baron Stern of Brentford in 2007, and appointed Companion of Honour for services to economics, international relations and tackling climate change in 2017. He has published more than 15 books and 100 articles and his most recent book is “Why are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency and Promise of Tackling Climate Change”.He holds 13 honorary degrees, and has received the Blue Planet Prize (2009), the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2010), the Leontief Prize (2010), and the Schumpeter Award (2015), amongst many others.

Moderator: Kate Hughes CBE

Kate worked as civil servant on UK and international climate and environment policies for twenty years, including as Director of International Climate Change. She was a friend and former colleague of Pete Betts and is now Chief Executive, Resilient Water Accelerator at WaterAid.

Co-hosted by the Grantham Research Institute and the World Resources Institute https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/events/landing-the-paris-climate-agreement-how-it-happened-why-it-matters-and-what-comes-next/

This is the Inaugural Annual Lecture at LSE in memory of Pete Betts, a distinguished British civil servant who gained global recognition for his leading role in the international climate negotiations, including a central contribution to the 2015 Paris Agreement. You can read more about his contribution to climate change here. Pete died in 2023 and is the author of a book to be published later this year describing his experiences of working over several decades on the climate crisis.