‘Reading the writing on the wall’: why Wall Street is acting on the climate crisis Dominic Rushe
Wildfires burned nearly 10.4m acres across the US last year. The most costly thunderstorm in US history caused $7.5bn in damage across Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. As the climate crisis swept the globe on a biblical scale it left in its wake a record number of billion dollar disasters.
And yet out of these ashes has emerged an unlikely savior: Wall Street. After decades of backing polluters and opposing legislation to rein them in, finance says it’s going green.
A steadily growing trend in investment went fully mainstream in 2020 as a record number of corporations pledged to go “net zero” and move to cancel out the carbon emissions they produce to halt a catastrophic rise in global temperatures.
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The number of companies that have set net-zero climate goals meaning that they’ll cut their CO2 emissions as much as possible, and any they still emit will be offset by projects that capture carbon has more than tripled over roughly the last year. Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, says that it plans to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Unilever, another consumer product giant with hundreds of brands, plans to get there by 2039. Duke Energy, the North Carolina-based electric utility with a long history of using coal, plans to reach net zero by 2050. Even oil companies such as BP now say that they are aiming for the same thing. Others, including Amazon and Microsoft, plan to hit the goal much sooner.
Commentary: Making pledges was the easy part but it’s a long road to net-zero emissions Toggle share menu
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Commentary: Making pledges was the easy part but it’s a long road to net-zero emissions The trouble with carbon offsets and the lack of an implementable roadmap in most countries’ declarations make climate action a wicked, urgent problem, says Yale-NUS’ Angel Hsu.
Singapore is planning a carbon tax on facilities such as petrochemical plants. (Photo: AFP/Roslan Rahman)
04 Feb 2021 10:04AM) Share this content
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SINGAPORE: It has been five years since the Paris climate treaty was agreed upon by nearly all countries.
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Press Release – UNFCCC To mark the anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the High-Level Climate Champions for the UK and Chile today announce a major update to the Race to Zero campaign, the largest ever alliance of regions, cities, businesses targeting net zero emissions, …
To mark the anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the High-Level Climate Champions for the UK and Chile today announce a major update to the Race to Zero campaign, the largest ever alliance of regions, cities, businesses targeting net zero emissions, now numbers over 2,500 members, representing a 30% increase since launching on World Environment Day.
The anniversary brings together over 70 Heads of State at the Climate Ambition Summit, which is being co-hosted by the United Nations, the United Kingdom and France in partnership with Chile and Italy.