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Another video question from our friends at Missouri Green Banc, Aclymate CEO Mike Smith dives into the state of international climate agreements and what you need to know about them!
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Mike Smith: So I got another question from
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my friends at the Missouri Green Bank, and they wanted to know, what is the state of international
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climate agreements and how are they affecting climate action? Well, you might be hearing in
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the news about something known as COP 28 that's happening right now in Dubai. COP's an acronym,
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it doesn't really matter what it stands for, but the important thing to know is that COP meetings
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are big treaty conferences. where representatives of every country on earth meet and over the past
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decade or so have been joined by a significant number of business people, scientists, activists,
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and others, and they all come together to talk about climate. A lot of climate deals happen here,
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both between governments, but also increasingly between these other organizations too. The COP
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meetings are super important, with the most famous being COP 21, and this is where the Paris
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Agreement was signed in 2016, and you guessed it, the city of Paris. It was a non-binding agreement
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that set the maximum warming target to be 2 degrees Celsius over the industrial average with
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an actual target goal of 1.5 degrees maximum. That comes out to be about 3.6 degrees and
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2.7 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. The science had been really clear that certain environmental
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tipping points happened at these thresholds. The Paris Agreement was the first time that
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the scientific... statements have been converted into political goals. And this is really important
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because it introduced the pathway for emissions reductions, for pollution reduction. Specifically,
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we have to cut 50% of our annual pollution every year, or excuse me, every decade. So 50% between
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now and 2030. Of the remainder, we have to cut 50% of that between 2030 and 2040. And of the
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remainder of that, we have to cut 50% between 2040 and 2050. getting somewhere between 88 and
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90% pollution reduction by 2050 overall. At the same time, we need to be ramping up the capacity
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for nature and technology to absorb pollution from the atmosphere. When this gets into balance,
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when we are able to capture as much pollution or more as we're putting into the atmosphere,
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this is something known as net zero. And this is a term that we're all gonna have to get increasingly
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familiar with. Anyways, each country sets its own national goals. They're totally voluntary. And
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so as a result, there's no way to make these countries abide by them. And even if we did,
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that would still put us on a pathway to three degrees Celsius of warming, which is obviously way
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past any of the goals. But nonetheless, the Paris agreement was really essential because it gave
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the explicit path that regulators and business people around the world would need to follow.
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My favorite example is the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. which was a commitment
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of $130 trillion of assets under management by big financial institutions around the world.
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That's 40% of the world's wealth in total. That's literally the largest number ever uttered in the
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history of markets. It's just bananas. All these people committed to investing in a net
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zero pathway. Another example was the expansion of the Montreal Protocol around preserving the ozone
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layer and to start including climate pollutants. A third example was an international an expansion
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of the international treaty around aviation to regulate international aviation emissions. But
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more recently, it's become less sectoral, less focused on specific sectors of business and more
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on just business broadly. In Europe, companies with over 250 employees are now going to be,
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are now required to measure, report and reduce their footprint in the United States. The
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Securities and Exchange Commission is finalizing a rule out any day now. that will require every
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publicly traded company in the United States to report their emissions. A different law
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in the state of California is requiring over 5,300 of the largest businesses in that state
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to report their emissions, including their supply chains. Federal suppliers are gonna
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have to start reporting their climate footprint too. So what does this all mean to you? Well,
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if your company does business with any of these regulated businesses or governments, or businesses
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that do businesses with those businesses or governments, you're soon going to have to report
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and reduce your climate footprint. Of course, we'd love to help you here at Acclimate, but
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the bigger point that I'm trying to make is that goals are almost as important as treaties. We'd
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obviously get to our goals faster if we had a more binding international agreement, but the wheels of
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democracy and business are turning. And the goals that we have are causing action to happen almost
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everywhere, kind of all at once, in bits and pieces that are accumulating into like some...
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really major action. This fragmented approach is ultimately gonna drive more overarching treaties
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and regulation, mainly because the biggest businesses are gonna be screaming for it in order
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to cut through the tangle of local regulations. And it's really not a question of if, but when,
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and the when's not that far off. So keep your optimism alive. Mine sure is. Follow for more.
English (United States)