Carnegie Council Podcasts

Editor-in-chief of World Politics Review, Judah Grunstein, discusses the fracturing of nation-states, the potential impacts of migration and extreme weather on electorate demands, the shift in economic paradigms due to organized labor, and the increasing influence of the Global South against the Global North in international politics in 2024.

Many objections to solar radiation modification (SRM)--such as the fear it could undermine other forms of climate action--have been overtaken by events, says The Ministry of the Future author Kim Stanley Robinson in this C2GTalk. The world is in a growing crisis, and cutting and removing emissions is taking too long. It’s time to learn whether SRM can help, and how to govern it. Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction writer. His books include the best-selling Mars trilogy, Red Moon, New York 2140, and The Ministry for the Future. He was part of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers’ Program in 1995 and 2016, and a featured speaker at COP-26 in Glasgow, as a guest of the UK government and the UN. For more, please go to C2G's website.

More research is needed to explore all aspects of solar radiation modification, including the technology and its impact on society, says UNESCO's Assistant Director-General Gabriela Ramos. It is important to build public trust in the research by engaging a wide and inclusive cross-section of society, including people from the arts and humanities. Gabriela Ramos is the assistant director-general for the social and human sciences of UNESCO, where she oversees the institution's contributions to building inclusive societies. Her mandate includes tackling economic inequalities of income and opportunity, and promoting social inclusion and gender equality For more, please go to C2G's website.

Celebrity and social media are changing the political game globally. Next year, 2024, will see more than 40 national elections from the U.S. to Mexico, India, Russia, and Taiwan; meanwhile 27 European Union nations will vote for 720 European Parliament seats. Seton Hall University's Dr. Brandon Valeriano joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to discuss the resurgence of soft power and what that means on the global stage. How will Taylor Swift, BTS, and Bad Bunny reshape our discussion of international affairs and social issues? What cybersecurity threats do we need to address as Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok take over the information space? For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

The world is due to exceed 1.5°C warming, and countries will face more extreme consequences in the near-term, warns Andy Reisinger in a C2GTalk. Significant levels of carbon dioxide removal will be required, and policies are needed to reduce adverse consequences. Solar radiation modification is more uncertain, and would reflect a failure of global governance to cut emissions. Andy Reisinger is an independent consultant specializing in the science-policy interface of climate change, with particular expertise in livestock agriculture and the role of methane as part of mitigation strategies. He was vice-chair of Working Group III (Mitigation) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during its 6th Assessment cycle completed in 2023, and previously served as coordinating lead author in the IPCC focusing on impacts and adaptation for Australia and New Zealand. For more, please go to C2G's website.

In this discussion with Senior Fellow Arthur Holland Michel, researcher and author Stephanie Hare describes the fundamental dimensions of technology ethics. She explains the importance of keeping the AI ethics discourse grounded in the needs and rights of those who will ultimately be most affected by the technology, and offers a few thoughts on how to brace—and empower—ourselves for the work that lies ahead. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

While there are certainly benefits, the breadth of concerns that AI, and particularly generative AI, pose for consumers is broad. And beyond privacy, governments are not doing much in the way of consumer protection. Furthermore, real protections will require worldwide standards and enforceable regulations. In this far-reaching conversation, Helena Laurent, director general of Consumers International, and Senior Fellow Wendell Wallach outline the challenges. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org. 

In this episode, host Hilary Sutcliffe explores . . . ethics from another angle, with Christian Hunt, author of Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioural Science to Ethics and Compliance. It's mind-boggling how many principles and guidelines are available on creating ethical cultures or delivering ethical technologies. But these are often high level and abstract, easy to talk about, and hard to do. Hunt’s book explores ethics not top down from the c-suite, but from the bottom up; using behavioral understanding and decades of hands-on experience to help organizations look at ethics from a human perspective, and design the rules and process that make ethics stick. For more, please go to: 

All eyes are on San Francisco today as U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet in a highly anticipated session during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit being held in the U.S. for the first time in 12 years. The tightly choreographed discussions are expected to lead to announcements on a diverse array of topics from re-starting climate talks to improving military to military communications and combating the fentanyl trade. Bethany Allen, China reporter for Axios and author of Beijing Rules, joins Doorstep co-hosts Tatiana Serafin and Nikolas Gvosdev to discuss what motivates Xi and how China continues to wield its authoritarian economic statecraft to expand its illiberal influence worldwide. What can governments do to counter this influence? And what can businesses expect as Xi sits down to a $2,000-a-plate dinner with executives, including Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Citigroup's Jane Fraser, and Tesla and SpaceX's Elon Musk? For more, please go to: https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/series/the-doorstep/beijing-rules-bethany-allen

It is important for scientists from the Global South to be engaged in research and discussions around solar radiation modification (SRM) because its potential impacts would affect everyone, says Inés Camilloni from the University of Buenos Aires. Researchers need to consider the risks of SRM against the risks of a dangerously warming planet. More research is needed, because the world currently does not know enough to make informed decisions. Dr. Camilloni is currently associate professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires, senior researcher of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council at the Center for Atmosphere and Ocean Research (CIMA) in Argentina, and vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group 1. For more, please go to carnegiecouncil.org.