Climate Talk

10/01/2016 2:30 PM

The campus International Affairs Organization, whose members are primarily international studies majors, hosted Wil Burns on October 20, 2016, for a talk on “The Paris Climate Agreement: Where Do We Go from Here?” Dr. Burns is the Co-Executive Director of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment, a scholarly initiative of American University. He also serves as the Co-Chair of the International Environmental Law Committee of the U.S. Branch of the International Law Association. Dr. Burns described the provisions of the Paris Climate Agreement signed in 2015 and which would enter into force in November 2016. He also addressed the problems and shortfalls of the agreement in terms of its stated objective of “keeping a global temperature rise this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further.” Burns completed his BS in Political Science at Bradley and was a member of the debate and speech teams. He also holds a PhD in International Environmental Law from the University of Wales-Cardiff School of Law.