Three Days in New York, Three Steps Forward Against Climate Change
It has been a busy week in the Big Apple and around the world. Beginning Sunday, over 310,000 people joined to march through the streets of New York and call for action against climate change. On Monday, while protestors were being handcuffed on Wall Street, a gathering at the Social Good Summit 2014 brought business leaders, activists, and entrepreneurs together in the name of social impact and sustainability. Then, on Tuesday, world leaders converged at the 2014 United Nations Climate Summit to discuss concrete steps to tackling that immense global challenge.
The significance of these three days in New York should not be overlooked. Together they symbolize an important and hopeful movement in the right direction: a simultaneous expression by civil society, the private sector, and governments worldwide of a common commitment in addressing the issue of climate change.
The people take the streets
The activity began Sunday with what organizers are calling the “largest mobilization on climate change in history.” In anticipation of the United Nations Climate Summit on Tuesday, an estimated 310,000 people hit the streets of Manhattan to demand serious action from policy makers in response to the growing threat of climate change. Among the attendees were politicians like New York Mayor Bill De Blasio and outspoken environmentalist Al Gore, diplomats like United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and even Hollywood celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Edward Norton.
Though the New York gathering was by far the largest, Sunday saw over 2000 marches take place in 166 countries across the globe. Representing virtually all demographics of society, participants in this global movement were unified by a common sense of empowerment in their ability as individuals to push private and public institutions to act in the face of a changing climate and protect the world for future generations.
Private sector opportunities
Next, on Monday, while the Social Good Summit convened at the 92nd Street Y, a group of environmental activists headed to Wall Street for a sit-in protest that for many onlookers evoked memories of the Occupy movement that began in 2011.
Yet Monday’s “Flood Wall Street” protest carried distinct differences from that which took over the streets of New York three years ago. Despite the obvious tension surrounding the climate change sit-in, highlighted by the arrest of more than 100 protestors, it seems fair to say that corporate execs are beginning, however gradually, to see eye to eye with this new wave of activists, at least more so than with their predecessors a few years ago. Increasingly, businesses and financial institutions are viewing sustainability in light of the economic opportunities it presents.
Take, for example, the Rockefeller family, heirs to the Standard Oil fortune, which on the same day as the Flood Wall Street protest announced that it would divest its $50 billion in fossil fuel assets and instead direct their investments to clean energy. The convergence of opinion would be spotlighted again at the UN Climate Summit on Tuesday, where leaders announced the commitment of investors and financial institutions to mobilizing an additional $200 billion for clean energy projects.
Meanwhile on Monday, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and public sector officials gathered at the Social Good Summit 2014 to discuss the impact of technology on social development initiatives. Also a global event, Social Good Summit events took place in 170 countries, in 45 languages, and involved more than 25,000 people across the globe. Among the variety of other topics addressed, ranging from entrepreneurship to education to women’s empowerment, the event served as a forum for a conversation on the possibilities and realities of action against climate change.
In a panel discussion titled Climate Justice: Climate Issues are Human Issues, Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, alluded to the economic danger of failing to respond to climate change, noting, “In the old days people used to talk about red-green tensions – the tensions between labor and the environment. And we saw on the streets yesterday that the labor contingent was as strong as any other contingent. Why are trade unions getting involved? Because as Sharan Burrow, the head of the global trade union movement, said to Ban Ki-Moon in a meeting we had… ‘There are no jobs on a dead planet.’”
Governments’ newfound urgency
Finally, on Tuesday, the United Nations convened to address the issue of climate change in the largest meeting of its kind since a rather discouraging session in Copenhagen in 2009. And while memories of the Copenhagen summit, where leaders were unsuccessful at rallying a unified front against climate change, lingered in people’s heads, this Climate Summit seemed to be accompanied by a new sense of urgency and broad consensus.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) noted, “I like to say the ground has shifted. Where it seemed impossible after Copenhagen, now we are at the point that we are optimistic.”
There may be reason for optimism. After a day of speeches and negotiations, attending countries put forth individual pledges to help prevent, mitigate, and compensate for the effects of climate change. This included the first such pledge by China, which agreed to a 45% cut in carbon per unit of GDP over 2005 levels by 2020.
The purpose of the meeting was to raise awareness and begin discussions in preparation of next year’s Paris talks, where the 120 member states of the UN will attempt to design a binding and comprehensive international framework for dealing with climate change. But the existing pledges are not legally binding, making some fear they will fare no better those at Copenhagen five years ago.
Yet according to Robert Orr, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Strategic Planning, there are immense differences between Copenhagen 2009 and NYC 2014, noting, “the economics of renewable energy… forestry, supply chain management, are very different from five years ago… The politics have also changed. People are in the streets, online, networked – yesterday we had over 2 billion impressions on the climate summit hashtag. So there is a more active public, a more active business sector, and these are real opportunities.”
Christiana Figueres pointed to the more tangible difference between the two summits:
“The sobering difference is that there is no doubt that the impacts of climate change are being felt more significantly and more severely than even 5 years ago. The fact we can feel that difference in just a few years is very alarming. The good news is that the cost of technology has come down… And we have a lot more domestic legislation. Governments can build on that domestic legislation and move to an international framework.”
Figueres added with an optimistic laugh, “I’m stretched to find any similarity between Copenhagen and where we are now.”
Three steps forward, no steps back
While the three consecutive days of positive energy in New York City marked three significant steps forward in the fight against climate change, we must all be careful not to diminish the progress by inadvertently stumbling backward. Optimism, after all, sometimes has the paradoxical effect of complacency and lethargy. For all of the symbolic importance of these three days in New York, we must make sure that each stakeholder in the unified front upholds its pledge for progressive action and matches it with a commitment against regressive action.
The individuals that took the streets of New York on Sunday, as well as those who didn’t, must recognize their power as consumers and direct their dollars to goods and services that promote and foster sustainability. Corporate and financial institutions should take a page out of the Rockefellers’ book and recognize that investing in clean technologies is not sufficient if it is outweighed by investment in dirty businesses like coal and oil. Governments should listen to their constituents, but when faced with concerns over job destruction, should recognize that investment in clean technology and infrastructure presents an opportunity for jobs and economic growth equivalent to an industrial revolution. Except unlike the two previous industrial revolutions, this one opens the door for global cooperation sustainability.