That didn't happen. The conference concluded before it was known who the new president was going to be. And I honestly believe that had we known the outcome of the election at the time the conference began, the results would have been different. To accept the bargaining positions of an administration that may or may not have any influence at all on its successor is a very awkward situation in the end. To really strike a deal, you have to trust the future administration to get it through Congress and deliver.

Q: Of the main points of the report, what are the most serious or upsetting for you?

I guess I could say three. One, that we're already seeing effects of climate change of the last half-century in natural and human systems. It has been seriously changing habitats and affecting human systems. Secondly, the fact that we now know with a high degree of confidence that the climate of the future will be more variable. And there's not any good news in extreme events. You can say, 'It will be a little warmer and it might be good or bad, less ski time and more beach time.' You can rationalize it. But extreme events are inherently disruptive. If you look over the last handful of years, it's the extreme events that have been so devastating.

Then I think the third message is this one of adaptation. We talked about it, but now it is so clear that your generation is going to have to be very attentive to the need to develop adaptive capacity in every nation or people who are not today perhaps vulnerable to the climate who will be in the future due to rising seas levels and storm surges, many coastal areas will

be vulnerable in ways they never have been before.