Goldman Sachs has become the first major U.S. bank to ban financing for new oil drilling or exploration in the Arctic region.
While environmental groups lauded the move as a step in the right direction, one advocacy group pointed out Monday that this is only a “fraction of Goldman Sachs’ multibillion-dollar fossil fuel portfolio.”
The announcement came in the investment bank’s updated Environmental Policy Framework on Sunday.
Article by Jason Hickel, 6 December 2019:
Scandinavian countries may top every ranking on human development, but they are a disaster for the environment!
Scandinavians have it all. Universal public healthcare and education that is the envy of the world. Reasonable working hours with plenty of paid vacation. They have some of the highest levels of happiness on the planet, and top virtually every ranking of human development.
Article, October 31, 2019 by Ida Auken and World Economic Forum:
By 2030, your CO2 emissions will be greatly reduced. Meat on your dinner table will be a rare sight. Water and the air you breathe will be cleaner and nature will be in recovery. The money in your wallet will be spent on being with family and friends, not on buying goods. Saving the climate involves huge change, but it could make us much happier at the same time.
Right now, we are losing the fight against climate change – but what would winning look like?
The report presents the latest data on the expected gap in 2030 for the 1.5°C and 2°C temperature targets of the Paris Agreement.
As the world strives to cut greenhouse gas emissions and limit climate change, it is crucial to track progress towards globally agreed climate goals. For a decade, UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report has compared where greenhouse gas emissions are heading against where they need to be, and highlighted the best ways to close the gap.More
Uddrag af artikel i Aktuell Hållbarhet, 21/10 2019:
“Bill Gates, Paris Hilton, Jennifer Lopez och andra rika kändisar i USA har fått sina flygresor kartlagda av en grupp forskare i Lund. Resultaten publiceras i en vetenskaplig artikel som visar att en rik elit är på väg att äta upp det globala utsläppsutrymmet.
I artikeln som publiceras i novembernumret av den vetenskapliga tidskriften Annals of Tourism Research har forskargruppen ledd av Stefan Gössling, professor i turism vid Lunds universitet, kartlagt tio internationella offentliga personers flygvanor under ett år. Siffrorna visar sig att personerna inte bara är superkändisar utan också ”superutsläppare”.
Av de tio amerikanska kändisarna var det Bill Gates, ordförande i Microsoft, som släppte ut mest – hela 1 600 ton koldioxid under det undersökta året 2017.More
In September 2019 Carbon Tracker’s latest report “Breaking the Habit” was released.
“The most common climate-related question facing investors – “how can we tell if a company is aligned with Paris”?
In this report, we lay out our approach and apply it to the largest listed oil and gas producers. For the first time, we look at alignment in terms of short term actions – which individual projects are non-Paris compliant and wouldn’t go ahead in an economically rational Paris-aligned world, yet nonetheless either a) were sanctioned last year; or b) are targeting sanction this year.More
A welcome development this week was the declaration from 181 chief executives of US companies to operate in a way that values and recognizes all their stakeholders.
The signatories to the Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, organized by Business Roundtable, includes commitments to:
Unilever has warned it will sell off brands that do not contribute positively to society, with British favourite Marmite and Magnum ice-cream among the big names thought to be vulnerable to a cull linked to the company’s sustainable business agenda.
Unilever’s chief executive Alan Jope said it was no longer enough for consumer goods companies to sell washing powders that make shirts whiter or shampoos that make hair shinier because consumers wanted to buy brands that have a “purpose” too.More
The below is an extract of an article by McKinsey.
You can read the entire article at McKinsey’s homepage here.
In the past year, several US states have announced 100 percent clean-power targets—meaning complete reliance on low-carbon sources such as wind and solar—to be achieved over the next 20 to 30 years. The European Union hopes to go even further: it wants to decarbonize almost its whole economy—not just the power sector—by 2050. Meeting these targets will require extensive efforts across sectors (including power, transportation, industry, and building heating), successful bets on technology, and complex policy changes that incorporate market incentives, costs, customer acceptance, and electrical interconnections with adjacent regions.More
New target will require the UK to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
The UK today became the first major economy in the world to pass laws to end its contribution to global warming by 2050.
The target will require the UK to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050, compared with the previous target of at least 80% reduction from 1990 levels.
The UK has already reduced emissions by 42% while growing the economy by 72% and has put clean growth at the heart of our modern Industrial Strategy. This could see the number of “green collar jobs” grow to 2 million and the value of exports from the low carbon economy grow to £170 billion a year by 2030.