[Global policy, business, and sustainability leaders descended on NYC for Climate Week. Here is my take, along with a couple links to smaller takeaways.]
Here’s my topline, gut reaction, on Climate Week:
Climate action is still moving.
New York hosted, they say, ~1,000 events with 100,000 people…more than last year. I only saw a slice of it, but the conversations I joined or moderated (from CEOs to farmers) were not defeatist. They felt…normal. Sober, realistic, even positive.
Yes, down the street, the U.S. president was calling climate a hoax. But maybe the right reaction is, so what?
Let’s entertain a few options on why things sound like they’re still moving:
– They ARE moving (globally, even if greenhushing is dominant in the U.S.)
– People are greenwashing/lying
– We’re delusional (or willfully naïve about the government attacks on climate action)
The greenwashing explanation is weak. To be blunt, the companies that pulled back already for real didn’t have people there — they’ve been laid off. The companies here this week are still in the game. Why would you come to a hostile U.S. and lie? So I think it’s mostly No.1 (good) with a dash of No.3 (meh, but we gotta stay sane somehow).
Big takeaway 1: This was a global meeting. As my co-author Paul Polman pointed out at Deloitte’s event, the U.S. is roughly just 15% of global trade and emissions. The other 85% is pressing ahead.
Big takeaway 2: There’s now a deep bench of companies with serious skin in game — including some B2B behemoths like Schneider Electric, ABB, Trane (a client), Johnson Controls, Mitsubishi Corporation, and more. They profit from efficiency, clean tech, energy solutions…
When $2 trillion a year is flowing into clean tech (vs $1 trillion into old energy), the “vested interests” don’t all pull backwards. And when renewables are cheaper and much faster to build (try getting a gas or nuclear plant opened quickly to meet growing demand from AI), even hostile policy probably can’t stop them. It just risks making electricity more expensive (which we’re already seeing).
The bottom line: of course we’re not going fast enough, and climate science is still ugly, but for many, climate action has become something almost boring…normal business.
[A lot of discussion on LinkedIn on this one]
Other posts/observations
Stockholm Resilience Center releases new Planetary Health Check
Local sustainability picture — bike lanes in NYC
[Image: AW prompts to ChatGPT]
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