trending Market Intelligence /marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/f39ewehJeM44uSoIlV5SqA2 content esgSubNav
In This List

Amid climate-related pledges, speakers at UN summit admit world has far to go

Blog

Europe: 5 key OTT trends to watch in 202

Podcast

Next in Tech | Episode 50: InfoSec spending up, again…

Blog

Broadcast deal market recap 2021

Podcast

Next in Tech | Episode 49: Carbon reduction in cloud


Amid climate-related pledges, speakers at UN summit admit world has far to go

SNL Image

Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, admonishes international leaders to tackle climate change at a United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York City on Sept. 23, 2019.

Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence

Amid dozens of government and private sector announcements on new climate-change-related targets and financing, speakers at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York City acknowledged far more needs to be done to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in opening remarks acknowledged a significant amount of money will be needed to curb global emissions.

"But the biggest cost" would be to not do anything, Guterres said. "The biggest cost is subsidizing a dying fossil fuel industry, building more and more coal power plants, and denying what is plain as day -- that we are in a deep climate hole and to get out we must first stop digging."

The Sept. 23 event kicked off a week of climate-related events in New York all focused on highlighting the willingness of countries, businesses and the financial sector to increase emissions-related targets or to pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Scientists have warned that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees will require achieving global net-zero emissions by 2050.

Countries that are parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change have until the end of 2020 to announce their increased emissions-reduction targets and implementation plans, also known as nationally determined contributions. Nearly five dozen nations have signaled their intention to submit an enhanced climate action plan in 2020, and another nine nations have started an internal process to consider whether to increase their ambition, the UN said in a Sept. 23 news release.

Amid all of the positive talk about climate change action, Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who has spearheaded youth climate-related protests in key U.S. cities in recent days, gave a scathing speech telling the heads of governments and corporations that they should be ashamed of themselves. Talking sometimes at the brink of angry tears, Thunberg said youth are beginning to wake up to the fact that federal leaders are not acting fast enough to slow global warming.

"This is all wrong, I shouldn’t be up here, I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope, how dare you. ... People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth."

She went on to say "the eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say we will never forgive you."

While speeches by national ambassadors and presidents and corporate CEOs largely highlighted their existing efforts, some revealed new initiatives.

For instance, Allianz SE CEO Oliver Baete announced his company is part of the newly formed Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance composed of some the world’s largest pension funds and insurers that collectively are responsible for directing more than US$2.4 trillion in investments. The alliance has committed to carbon-neutral investment portfolios by 2050, wich Baete said would mean that the companies in the portfolios of alliance members would have to decrease their emissions from 37 gigatons of annual carbon dioxide emissions to 3 gigatons annually by 2050.

Baete insisted that the group will first push for companies to change, but he left the door open to divesting from companies that refuse to change. "It’s not just about investment and divestment, it’s about dialogue," he said.

Governments and foundations also announced new climate-related funding. The governments of Germany Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, The United Kingdom, and the European Union along with the World Bank and the Gates Foundation commit to provide $750 million to help 300 million small-scale agricultural producers enhance their resilience to a changing climate, increase household incomes and food security, and reverse the potential for ecological impacts by 2030.

According to press reports, President Donald Trump attended the climate summit briefly while he was at the U.N. attending the general assembly gathering. But no U.S. government representatives spoke at the summit.

Alluding to the fact that Trump has pledged to pull the U.S. from the Paris accord, Wang Yi, China's state councilor and special representative of its president, said, "The withdrawal of certain parties will not shake the collective will of the international community, nor will it possibly reverse the historical trend of international cooperation."