56 TheEconomistSeptember 28th 2019
1“H
ow dare you!”Even by her impas-
sioned standards, the address to the
unGeneral Assembly by Greta Thunberg, a
young Swedish climate activist, was corus-
cating stuff. “How dare you continue to
look away and come here saying that you’re
doing enough when the politics and sol-
utions needed are still nowhere in sight.”
She will have seen or heard little at the un’s
one-day climate summit or in the wide
range of get-togethers surrounding it
which made up New York’s climate week to
placate her wrath.
The summit concluded with a torrent of
new announcements. There was a commit-
ment by 65 countries and the European Un-
ion to reach net-zero carbon emissions—
taking as much carbon dioxide out of the
atmosphere as they are putting in—by- Germany, Slovakia and others joined
an alliance to halt the construction of coal
plants; 32 countries are now members.
Companies and investors announced mea-
sures to reduce emissions from shipping,
buildings and more. Narendra Modi, In-
dia’s prime minister, set a new 450-giga-
watt target for his country’s renewable-en-
ergy capacity, more than five times the
current level. The un’s secretary-general,
António Guterres, professed himself
pleased: “Today, in this hall, the world saw
clear ambition and concrete initiatives.”
Some announcements were promises
of future announcements. Fully 59 coun-
tries said that they would shortly be unveil-
ing more ambitious commitments under
the Paris agreement, which aims to keep
global temperatures “well below” 2°C
above those in pre-industrial times; a glo-
bal round of such increased commitments
is to be negotiated next year.
Even if all the pledges are acted on,
though, the gap between what the summit
promised and what needs to be done re-
mains a chasm. If Mr Modi were to quintu-
ple India’s renewable power capacity over 11
years, that would represent an annualgrowth no higher than that of renewable
generation worldwide in the decade 2007-
17—and he said nothing about reining in
the support that India’s state-owned banks
offer coal companies. India has made no
commitment to reach net-zero by 2050 or
at any other time—any more than America,
China or Russia has.
Away from the un, businesses got in on
the act. Some 87 companies, including
Nestlé and Salesforce, a big provider of
software-as-a-service, pledged to reach
net-zero emissions in their businesses by- Jeff Bezos did them ten years better,
announcing that Amazon would reach net-
zero emissions by 2040 and that it was buy-
ing 100,000 electric lorries to move to-
wards that goal. Overall, some 650 compa-
nies with a market value of $11trn have
signed up to the Science-Based Targets Ini-
tiative, a consortium of ngos which certify
and monitor the commitments firms make
to align themselves with the Paris objec-
tives. Many aim to cut emissions by around
2.5% a year. They are trying to reduce ener-
gy consumption in their supply chains and
in the way their products are used, too. On
average these emissions are almost six
times larger than those from a firm’s direct
operations, says Alberto Carrillo Pineda of
cdp, an ngo which monitors corporate cli-
mate efforts.
Unfortunately, while target-setting
firms account for 14% of the world’s stock-
market value, they emit only 2% of its car-
bon. Between 1988 and 2015, according to
Climate actionThe day after tomorrow
NEW YORK
Signals amid the noise at the UN’s climate summitInternational
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