November 2022 Is A Pivotal Month For Sustainability
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As we move to the fall of 2022, we should note that November is a busy month with sustainability and green growth summits and opportunities. These include the Egypt Climate Conference of the Parties COP27 and the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia. These events are taking place during an economic recession, a war between Russia and Ukraine, and a very fragile global economy affected by high inflation, supply chain disruptions and post-Covid traumas.
While these economic and geopolitical shocks create incentives for unsustainable carbon intensive practices such as coal-based energy generation, we should look at November in the context of a “changed world”. A world that has lost 6.5 million people due to Covid 19 (as of August 31, 2022) and that has lost $8 trillion in economic output just in 2020 (this equal 10% of 2020 global output). This is a word that also believes decarbonization is the best way to prevent future crises, to manage shocks when these occur, as well as to create a new industrial revolution.
Climate Summit COP27: The Egyptian government will host over 150 Heads of States to continue executing the Paris 2015 Climate Accords. These aimed to ensure that all countries reach Zero-Net by 2050 (Net-zero refers to the decarbonization of our economies to the level in which the greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere are harmonized by their complete removal), to prevent uncontrollable global warming. Last year at the COP26 in the United Kingdom, most countries except China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and India, committed to Net-Zero by 2050. These laggards committed to do the same by 2060. It is important to note that these are just commitments and non-binding agreements. Suffice to remember that when President Trump won the election 6 years ago, withdrew the US from all global climate agreements.
COP27 takes place at an inflexion point though. The US has just approved a $500 billion climate investment package. Clean tech investment has accelerated, topping 1$ trillion in 2021. The First Mover Coalition (50 of the largest corporations in the world (with a market cap of 60 trillion) committed at Davos Economic to buy green cement, green hydrogen and green coal providing the market signals to make these scalable. Wall Street is scooping up any climate risk modelling firm to…
