After the “United States of America” (USA) presidential election the “Dow Jones Industrial Average” (Dow) increased ca. 5% within one day (see graph). This is certainly due to many reasons.
Nevertheless, within the context of in our view the most pressing topic for human history – global warming, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity – and in advance of the “2024 UN Climate Change Conference” (COP29) the “Wall Street” reaction and the reaction from the financial markets is devastating. With the Trump administration strongly needed global reduction of “Greenhouse Gas” (GHG) emissions will most likely be of rather low priority and will be further delayed (or GHG emissions will be even increased).
Global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are still increasing
From a “management perspective” and from a (long term) humanitarian perspective, the “key performance indicator” (KPI) with the highest priority (most importance & urgency) for the upcoming 5 to 25 years for our planet Earth is the global annual amount of GHG emissions. But, the annual global GHG emissions are still rising (see graph from “Our World in Data“).
The Wall Street and financial markets not surprisingly do not account for this most worrying development. They are focused on (short term) profits. That is what corporations are built for and it is suicidal to think, profit oriented corporations will focus on global warming, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity unless it increases turnovers and/or profits. That is the task for corporations, that is the duty of the leaders within these profit oriented corporations and they work very hard every day to actually increase their “Shareholder Value”, the “Economic Value Added” (EVA) or (more simple) the “Return on Investment” (ROI) within all possible global & local legal surrounding conditions.
It is clearly first of all within the responsibility of politics to take care of healthy and thus sustainable surrounding conditions. This demands strong (global) political leadership.
It is time to admit, we (as humanity) were not able to keep global warming, climate change, and the loss of biodiversity “within human control”, clarified within the so called “Paris Agreement” (https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement), entered into force on 4 November 2016 and being ratified from 195 parties by 2021.
Based on our understanding, we already have emitted enough GHGs to at least see a global average temperature rise of 2.5°C (in comparison to the global average pre-industrial temperature from 1850-1900) within the upcoming 10 to 25 years. Official papers from “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” (IPCC) are in our view significantly too optimistic.
The temperatures will increase exponentially without any significant actions to reduced GHG emissions
Furthermore, the temperature increase will not be linear, it will be exponential. Our planet Earth is a complex system with dynamic correlations. (Unstoppable) self-reinforcing cycles will be activated after reaching tipping points. The GHG sinks are full now and the so far ca. 30 years time lag (see graph) between emitting GHGs and actual temperature rise will very fast decline. GHG emissions will more and more impact the temperature rise directly and the time lag will (significantly) decrease.
Wall Street and the financial markets will not be of any help, unless we are able to come up with global binding rules to actually reduce the global GHG emissions. This might be a global market for GHG certificates, this might be a (clear) ban of fossil fuels and a significant reduction of (beef) meat production, like the 1987 “United Nations Environment Programme” (UNEP) Montreal Protocol did this with ozone-depleting substances (ODS) to mitigate the ozone hole.
COP29 has to prove very strong global political leadership
Currently we lack the global political structures to actually get this fixed for GHG. So we advocate for a first global direct democratic vote (referendum) with potentially 5.4 billion people easily participating and the development of a “Global Democratic Republic” (out of the United Nations). This can enable the in our view most important & urgent (highest priority) needed transformation away from fossil fuel & meat production into a healthy & thus sustainable energy and food supply.