Join us for the final installment in our Fall 2026 Seminar Series featuring Scott Moore. Each month, the series spotlights Penn experts at the forefront of climate science, policy, and action, sharing work and research that’s shaping how we understand and respond to a changing world.
Summary: This talk will draw on recent research drawing from a unique dataset on China’s climate diplomacy and climate finance to look at how China views and acts on climate change. In particular, it examines how Chinese leaders employ sophisticated audience segmentation strategies, using different rhetoric and deploying different financing packages to different diplomatic audiences. This has significant implications both for China, the US, and international climate policy. Chinese leaders understand that many of their most strategic partner countries, including the Pacific Island states, Pakistan, and even Russia, take climate change seriously and expect it to figure prominently in diplomatic engagement. China accordingly delivers carefully calibrated climate messaging to different interlocutors, coupled with distinctive financing for climate mitigation, adaptation, and energy system development. The US, by contrast, has virtually ceded the field of climate diplomacy and finance following its withdrawal from both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.
This seminar is co-hosted with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. Location TBD.
Bio: Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Scott Moore is Managing Director of Global Initiatives, Research, and Strategy, Practice Professor of Political Science, Director of the Penn Global Climate Security and Geopolitics Project, Principal Investigator of the Penn International Climate Observatory, Faculty Fellow of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, and Senior Advisor to The Water Center at Penn, all at the University of Pennsylvania. His primary research interests center on China, climate change, and emerging technologies, especially China’s role in the global biotechnology sector. His latest book, China’s Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future (Oxford University Press, 2022), explores China’s role in global public goods provision against the backdrop of geopolitical rivalry and competition and what it means for action on climate change and other shared global challenges.