YSE Experts Discuss Opportunities, Challenges, and Common Ground at Climate Week NYC

Climate Week NYC 2025 brought together leaders from government, business, academia, and civil society to advance climate solutions and accelerate global action. Across hundreds of events, conversations underscored the urgency of the challenge, and the opportunities for collaboration, innovation, and impact. Yale School of the Environment faculty, alumni, and students were at the center of many of these discussions. They contributed insights and expertise at several panels at the two-day Yale @ Climate Week NYC summit hosted by Yale Planetary Solutions, as well as at many other events held across the city, on topics ranging from bipartisan climate action to the role of artificial intelligence in advancing climate progress.

Here are some key takeaways from these thought-provoking conversations:

Don’t let language get in the way of advancing solutions.

Political divides often hinge on rhetoric, but during the September 24 panel, “How Did We Get Here—and Where Do We Go? Rebuilding Bipartisanship in the U.S. Environmental Movement,” organized by the Yale Environmental Dialogue, panelists U.S Rep. Bruce Westerman ’01 MF, R-AR, former U.S. Reps. Stephanie Murphy, D-FL, and Carlos Curbelo, R-FL, and former U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, D-LA, emphasized that shared goals matter more than the labels we use.

Moderator Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the JoshAni-TomKat Professor of Climate Communication, noted that despite political polarization, there is still significant overlap on solutions: “Even in today’s environment, Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly support many potential climate solutions—from funding farmers to store more carbon in the soil, to investing in clean energy research, to planting a trillion trees. There remains a surprising amount of consensus.”

Panelist Murphy emphasized that the words we use shouldn’t get in the way of building consensus.

“I didn’t really care about how you talk about an issue, so long as we get the outcome,” Murphy said. “If you don’t want to say climate change, and you want to talk about weather events, then call it a weather event, and I’ll call it climate change. It doesn’t really matter as long as it helps move a solution forward.”

Murphy shared stories of unlikely bipartisan alliances, including partnering with former Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to prevent drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Their motivations differed— defense readiness for him, environmental protection for her—but the shared outcome advanced climate and economic security for Florida.

As Murphy put it, “Finding common ground, speaking a language that works for everyone, enables us to do something important together.”

AI can empower communities.

During the September 25 panel “Frontier Issues in AI and Climate Change: Seizing the Opportunity, Meeting the Challenge,” moderated by Dan Esty, the Hillhouse Professor of Environmental Law and Policy, the panelists, including Alexis Abramson, dean of the Columbia Climate School and a Professor of Climate, Michel Gelobter, executive director of the Yale Center for Environmental Justice, Uday Khemka, managing trustee of The Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation and director of The Green AI Learning Network, and David Sandalow '78, inaugural fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and host of the AI, Energy and Climate Podcast, discussed how innovation alone won’t ensure AI delivers on its climate potential. Without thoughtful guardrails, it could even deepen inequalities, they noted.

“There are so many opportunities to use AI to accelerate the clean energy transition and fight climate change,” said Sandalow. “We’ve seen how transformative AI has been in just the past few years. Imagine applying that kind of revolutionary technological change to the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and shift from dirty energy to clean energy. The opportunities are enormous.”

The panelists highlighted the need for policy frameworks, cross-sector collaboration, and an equity-centered approach. They pointed to the importance of advancing scientific tools, such as AI-driven platforms, that can help frontline communities better understand and track climate impacts.

“Imagine being in Mumbai after a flood and having AI map what happened, who’s responsible, and what commitments were made. That’s the kind of tool we’re building,” Gelobter said, referencing Climate Action & Information for Communities (cAIc), a program in development at YCEJ.

The global economy is transitioning to renewable energy — with or without U.S. participation.

“The renewable transition is very much underway and is underway at a massive scale around the world, manifesting in the most unexpected of spaces — like finding yourself in a pure EV traffic jam in the middle of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,” said James Mwangi, founder and CEO of Africa Climate Ventures, and a 2021 Yale World Fellow, during a panel on how current trade tensions and evolving policies are affecting the sustainability landscape and prospects for global climate cooperation.

Mwangi and co-panelists at “After the Deluge: Reconfiguring International Trade for a Sustainable Future,” including Samuel Kortum, Yale University Professor of Economics, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, and Berthold Goeke, Director of Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, shared insights on how trade policies could become an efficient tool for reinforcing sustainability commitments.

“If a country isn’t meeting sustainability standards, it’s efficient to make them pay a penalty rather than gain a competitive advantage from underperforming,” said Esty “The trade system may be the single best way to reinforce those standards— especially if we rethink how subsidies are treated, giving clean energy support the presumption of being acceptable while discouraging fossil fuel subsidies.”

Companies need tools and guidance to navigate carbon markets.

A roundtable discussion, “Corporate Engagement in Carbon Markets,” on September 25 drew a diverse group of participants, including carbon leads from private industry, carbon project managers, ratings agencies, investors, nonprofit organizations, and students and staff from the School of the Environment and School of Management.

Newsletter

Subscribe to “YSE 3”

Biweekly, we highlight three news and research stories about the work we’re doing at Yale School of the Environment.

Attendees explored motivations for engaging in the voluntary carbon market and shared perspectives on how companies are positioned to act. Panelists, including Sara Kuebbing, director of research at the Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program and research scientist at YSE, and Gillian Bloomfield, associate director of online programs at the Yale Environmental Leadership and Training Initiative (ELTI) led discussions on the business case for corporate involvement and barriers to purchasing nature-based carbon credits.

There was a strong consensus that education, knowledge sharing, and guidance are needed to help companies navigate the market, understand the different credit types, and make decisions aligned with their values. Attendees also emphasized the importance of cohesion and collaboration among market actors to provide clarity and confidence to buyers.

The roundtable, Bloomfield noted, reinforced how much enthusiasm there is currently for carbon markets’ potential to accelerate climate mitigation and highlighted Yale and ELTI’s role in helping companies evaluate opportunities and advance climate goals.