If We Don't Solve This, Solving Anything Else Won't Matter: Top Stories for Wednesday

TAKE ACTION – The Climate Summit has concluded in New York as the hottest summer in recorded history is too ending. US President Barack Obama gave a rousing speech yesterday, pointing out the responsibility of the largest and most polluting nations such as the US and China (a longstanding argument of the smallest and most suffering countries, which earned the president his first applause from the assembly). Still, "nobody gets a pass," he added. "Of all the immediate challenges that we're gathered here to address this week – terrorism, instability, equality, disease – there's one issue that will define the contours of this century more than any other: that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate," he said. Citing Washington governor Jay Inslee, he added:

We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we are the last generation that can do something about it.”

And China did acknowledge that responsibility, though Premier XI Jinping was one of the notable absentees, along with his Indian and Canadian counterparts, Narendra Modi and Stephen Harper. Beijing made its first ever commitment to become more carbon efficient by 2020 and pledging its emissions would peak "as early as possible." It may not sound like much but the path to here was long. The Chinese public is speaking up about smog and officials are paying attention.

The Summit, which is only a political prelude to more concrete negotiations in Paris next year, gave rise to many other commitments, which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon listed in a hopeful conclusion. "The difference between this summit and the meeting the secretary general convened in 2009 is enormous," Andrew C. Revkin writes in the New York Times, referring to the huge hype and disappointment of the Copenhagen meeting five years ago. Maybe because this time world leaders are focused on small, fast and realistic actions, rather than moving every country at once to drastic lifestyle changes, the task doesn't seem quite so unsurmountable. But will it be enough? The world isn't looking at stopping global warming anymore, but at whether we can keep it at +2°C and how we will cope with the effects.

World leaders and LinkedIn members are taking to this site this week to speak up on climate action, under the hashtag #2030Now. Read a few of these and consider sharing your thoughts:

• Jeffrey Sachs argues "sustainable development is the central drama of our time."
• UN Women's Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka warns women and girls will be the first to suffer.
• World Bank President Jim Kim shows climate change is a business issue and shares examples of what companies have been doing and can do to help.

Weather Channel CEO David Kenny writes than you can keep gathering facts until you're blue in the face, you'll never know everything you'd like to know about climate change. But we know enough to start making changes. This summit won't give us all the answers, nor will a series of posts, but it's something.

History will judge us harshly for failing to do something because we didn’t know everything.

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I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR – In the realm of something is better than nothing, there's this. The three major soda makers, Coca Cola, PepsiCo and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, have pledged to cut calories by 20 percent by 2025. That is, they won't cut the amount of sugar in your regular Coke – about 10 sugar cubes in your average can, if you must know – but will use their marketing and distribution power to push people toward low-calorie options: changing the way supermarket shelves and vending machines are stocked, modifying portion sizes, offering more healthy options in poorly served markets (the "food deserts" of low-income neighborhoods), and so on. The goal, announced for the 10th annual Clinton Global Initiative held in New York alongside UN Week and the Climate Summit, is to cut the overall number of calories Americans ingest from sugared drinks. You'd be right to say that pushing diet sodas is fraught with all kinds of problems (the body seems to react to sweetener in much the same way it does to sugar); that bottled water is an expensive and unnecessary environmental scourge and that soda and processed food magnates have nothing to do in something called the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. There will always be two camps here. But something beats nothing.

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"WE SELL HAMMERS" – We're getting a bit more detail on the Home Depot data breach. The home improvement retail chain confirmed the credit card information of 56 million customers was compromised between April and September. Those credit card details are up for sale and fraudulent transactions have started showing up across the US, the WSJ's Robin Sidel reports (paywall, subscription required). She also has details on what you can do to protect yourself. It's starting small, but since the theft is even larger than the 40 million stolen cards Target took so much heat for last year, it could grow larger. It's estimated illegal purchases could tally up to $3 billion. Tongues are loosening and ex-employees told the New York Times that security was never taken very seriously there. Possibly unrelated but troubling, the company's former lead security engineer is now serving a four-year sentence in federal prison for sabotaging his previous employer's computer network. "We sell hammers" is the one devastating quote in the report by Julie Creswell and Nicole Perlroth. This was apparently management's response to why they shouldn't invest further in securing their transactions. Customers might respond by buying their hammers elsewhere.

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Photo Collage: LinkedIn with images by: creative commons licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by John Englart (Takver) & creative commons licensed (BY-NC-SA) flickr photo by Len Radin & unsplash & death to the stock photo & creative commons licensed (BY-NC-SA) flickr photo by World Economic Forum