“World’s first year-long breach of key 1.5C warming limit” reads the BBC News headline this morning. Perhaps just as troubling are the two hyperlinks below the headline, which ask: “Why is the world getting warmer?” and “What is the Paris climate agreement?” If the average BBC News readership needs answers to those questions in 2024, it really does not bode well for our dwindling chances of resolving the climate crisis. Have they been living under a rock?
Although the temperature target has been breached in part due to the reappearance of El Niño, that only accounts for about 0.2 degrees, which is little consolation. Let us look at the situation from a personal perspective and a professional one. Spoiler alert: neither provides much encouragement. As an individual keen on following current affairs, it is hard to keep one’s blood pressure under control and avoid permanent ocular strain from multiple eye rolls. We live in a world where a previously serious major political party in a supposedly world superpower nation is suggesting that Taylor Swift is part of a conspiracy to fix the result of the Superbowl so that she can join her football playing boyfriend in publicly endorsing incumbent President Biden for the upcoming US elections. Meanwhile California is underwater, the latest in a long line of extreme weather events as Mother Nature screams at us to do something.
Anecdotal evidence tells the Laundromat that individuals are either largely unaware of the seriousness of the climate crisis, deliberately in denial, or terribly worried and paralysed like a rabbit in the headlights. More serious academic evidence suggests that the solution to the problems does not lie with individuals, despite marketing efforts by greenwashing oil companies to make them think so. Most credible sustainability experts agree that top-down, systemic change is the only action that can genuinely get us back on track. This is why the Taylor Swift example is so utterly disheartening. If that is the level of our top politicians, then we are really on our way to hell in a handcart. In fairness to the Americans, many countries are also seeing climate change morph into a political football for so-called populist parties looking to score points against the “woke” mob that are simply trying to save us from scientifically proven disaster. Here in the UK, “net zero” is being blamed by politicians for everything from the cost-of-living crisis to the recent Brexit-induced closure of the last steel furnace in the country.
Faced with this messy approach to global warming on a daily basis, one could hope that working as a sustainability professional would provide some uplifting insights into amazing shifts of capital and successful international collaborative efforts to steer companies towards urgently transitioning to a low-carbon, green global economy. Unfortunately, as readers of this column will know, aside from the occasional pocket of positivity the pace of change is glacial.
Among the themes that NordSIP has been exploring in recent months is the effectiveness of the engagement process that institutional asset owners carry out with high-emitters in their portfolios. The theory is that large investors club together to use their combined might to exert polite pressure on investee companies to get their act together and put their businesses on a proper science-based net-zero pathway. One such initiative is the Climate Action 100+ (CA100+), involving 700 signatories with assets totalling $68 trillion targeting the 100 highest global emitters. In 2022 ShareAction took a detailed look under the hood (or under the bonnet if you’re British) of CA100+ and found it sorely lacking. For instance, 82% of the surveyed members had neither specified climate targets for engagement nor any escalation procedures. A quick look at the capital expenditure of fossil fuel firms shows they are still getting away with investing piffling amounts on genuine renewables. These are clearly not firms that are sweating under the pressure from asset owners.
But what can we do to get these high emitters to finally start living up to their climate commitments? I can give you a swift answer. She has the Grand Old Party quaking in its boots and is arguably the most powerful and influential person on the planet. We simply put Taylor Swift in charge of resolving the climate crisis and you will find Aramco plugging up oil wells and building windmills in the blink of an eye. Climate crisis…is it over now?
