Climate Change - the Why, the What and the So What?

Climate Change is in the news for three main reasons:

• Catastrophic weather conditions seem to signal accelerating global warming. Examples this year alone included forest fires in Australia, frequent hurricanes in the Caribbean, "heat dome" over Canada & northwest US, avalanche in the Himalayas, floods in Europe, drought in east Africa, and more.
• Young activists are campaigning very effectively to gain our collective attention. #gretathunberg has over 280 million views on TikTok.
• In a multi-polar world, United Nations frameworks can today apply more pressure on individual countries than they could 30, 20 or even 10 years ago.

Inevitably, the annual UN Conference of Parties has become a must-have ticket for people in governments, politics, business and culture. The event is at par with or even higher profile than conferences like Davos, summits like the UN General Assembly, and sports & cultural happenings like Champions League, Coachella or Cannes. The most recent was the 26th UN Conference of Parties (COP26) hosted by the UK and Italy. It culminated in the Glasgow Climate Pact. We will analyse the Pact by exploring five key questions in a series of articles by Project Brains specialists:

1. Why are we facing climate change - i.e. the current scientific consensus - and what are various national goals committed to counter it? This leads to today's popular investment thesis - ESG (Environment, Social and Governance).
2. What are today's technologies & tools to counter climate change? We will look at opportunities in nature & afforestation, renewable power, heat pumps, electric mobility, data & analytics, green bonds, etc.
3. How will the technologies & tools evolve? Here we look into the future innovation pipeline across sectors like meat alternatives, hydrogen, batteries, carbon capture, utilization & storage (CCUS), advanced nuclear, green finance, and more.
4. When must changes happen in behaviour and choices? This is not a big bang, rather a series of steps. Clarity on timing is crucial to avoid false bets.
5. Where are high-growth business opportunities? This drives the climate investment thesis over the next decade and longer.

We will conclude each article with the so what: actions for us all to consider. These are for us: in our role as a consumer, an saver or an investor, an economically-active worker, and an engaged citizen.

The key principle for these considerations is to align us better to the Cleantech transition. Failure to be a positive part of this change will impact our future - personal and professional - as well as inhibit our community, business and nation. And who would want that!

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