016: App State at The United Nations Climate Change Conference

Lee welcomes Dr. Dave McEvoy, Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics in the Walker College of Business along with Grace Waugh, a senior sustainable technology major and Matthew Mair, a senior economics and political science major. The 4 discuss their January 2023 trip to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

 

Links:

Appalachian Today Article about the COP27 Trip

 

Transcript:

 

Lee Ball:

Welcome to another episode of Find Your Sustainability. My name is Lee Ball. I'm the Chief Sustainability Officer here at Appalachian State, and today we have three guests in the podcast studio.

It's our first ever attempt to have multiple guests, more than one. First we have David McEvoy, Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics in the Walker College of Business. Welcome, David.

Dave McEvoy:

Thanks for having me.

Lee Ball:

Grace Waugh, a senior sustainable technology major. Welcome, Grace.

Grace Waugh:

Happy to be here.

Lee Ball:

And last but not least, we have Matthew Mair, a senior economics and political science major. Welcome, Matthew.

Matthew Mair:

Thanks for having me.

Lee Ball:

So, I'm going to start with Dave. The goal of this podcast is to share with our listeners an experience that we've all had together of attending the COP27 Conference of Parties in Egypt this past fall.

Prior to talking about the experience in Egypt, I just wanted to ask you, Dave, can you tell us a little bit about the UN Conference of Parties?

Dave McEvoy:

Yeah, sure.

My interest in climate change negotiations and the United Nations, the UN kind of Climate Conference, really started way back in graduate school as an economics major. Been interested in kind of the strategic aspects of policy surrounding climate change.

And so the body that governs this, at an international level, is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or the UNFCCC. And every year since 1992, except for maybe a COVID year, we have an annual conference of the parties. Roughly 200 countries get together and try to work towards a common goal of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and limiting the damages from rising temperatures.

Lee Ball:

So Dave, why did you want to provide students the opportunity to attend a COP?

Dave McEvoy:

I mean, to be honest, I just thought it would be a fun, cool, interesting, hopefully life-changing kind of experience. Not knowing too much about how it would shake out, we have two of our initial cohort students here with us today. And so I thought that bringing students would be kind of eye-opening in the sense of how massive this problem is.

And although from the press, I don't know, the coverage can be disappointing in terms of how we've done in trying to manage this problem. Just being there, kind of demonstrates how important this is for so many people. I mean, thousands and thousands, 30 to 40,000 delegates spend resources, time, energy, effort, to try their best to work on this problem. And so I think just being there is something that you can't capture in a classroom environment.

Lee Ball:

Grace, why did you want to attend the COP?

Grace Waugh:

Yeah, so my major in sustainable technology is in large part a very technical degree, so I added an economics minor my sophomore year, in order to try and get another perspective on sustainability because the biggest argument against a lot of the renewable energy initiatives that we have is that they're not going to be economically feasible, and I don't believe that to be entirely true and so I wanted to get another perspective on that.

And so when the opportunity to go to the conference and see, not only what all of the other countries are doing in their sustainability efforts, but also the economic aspects of it and the negotiation portions, it seemed like a really great experience to see what the rest of the world is doing and get out of the bubble that I've lived in, in the United States, for my whole life.

Lee Ball:

Matthew, I have the same question for you. Why did you want to attend the COP?

Matthew Mair:

This is, I think a really great opportunity for me specifically because of my combination of majors. I have a international concentration in my political science major and an environmental concentration in my economics major and so this really was just the perfect opportunity for me to go out into the world and see what people in my fields are working on, and it was just really eye-opening opportunity to see what kind of career pathways and opportunities are out there for people who are interested in sustainability and environmental problems.

Lee Ball:

Dave, what