On Tuesday at the Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Business Forum in New York City, managing director of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva took a moment to sing the line “This is how we do it” from the 1995 hip hop hit “This is How We Do It.” She did this while on stage with president of the World Bank Group Ajay Banga and United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance Mark Carney.
Although Banga did immediately point out Georgieva’s important omission of the word “baby” at the end, two other words—”we” and “do”—in what Georgieva sang did echo what was emphasized throughout the forum, which was concluded by a speech from U.S. President Joe Biden. Everyone there agreed about a need for more collective (hence the word “we”) action (hence the word “do”) against climate change. After all, the ongoing climate crisis has become one of the biggest threats to human health and well-being.
Michael R. Bloomberg, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and founder of Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Philanthropies, opened the forum by explaining its purpose: “We created this forum to offer leaders a chance to have conversations across the private and public sectors, and to build new partnerships on some of the toughest challenges we face.” He continued by saying, “Today, climate change is the special focus of our conversations, because no single issue presents bigger threats to peace and prosperity or greater opportunities to spur economic growth.”
The forum then proceeded through a series of four discussions featuring various business leaders and policy makers including Georgieva, Banga, Carney, CEO of ALTÉRRA Majid Al Suwaidi, CEO of CDP Sherry Madera, President and Chief Investment Officer of Alphabet and Google Ruth Porat, CEO of LSEG David Schwimmer, Chair of the Board for IOSCO Jean-Paul Servais, Managing Director & CEO of the Macquarie Group Shemara Wikramanayake and Group Chief Executive of Standard Chartered Bill Winters. Actor and activist Jane Fonda then came on stage to make some remarks, followed by Bloomberg, who then set the stage for a speech from Biden, who had addressed the UN General Assembly earlier that day.
The other active participant on stage throughout the forum was a healthy respect for science. No one went against the abundant evidence that climate change is real and a big-time threat to human well-being. There was no need to further convince anyone that human-generated pollution has been contributing to climate change. There was no talk of space lasers causing the California wildfires or other such unscientific claims. Although Biden did at one point during his speech, lean closer to the microphone and say in a deeper voice, “By the way, windmills do not cause cancer.” Yeah, no real tilting at windmills in this forum.
No, the forum was oriented towards discussing what has been done and what more should be done about the climate crisis. For example, during the first panel discussion moderated by Carney and entitled “Multiplying Impact and Improving Lives Through Partnerships,” Georgieva and Banga reviewed the actions that the IMF and World Bank have been taking individually and in concert. “We look at green growth opportunities for our members,” said Georgieva. “As a financial institution, people look at us and say, ‘You think climate is important? Put money where your mouth is.’” She continued by saying, “So, we created the Resilience and Sustainability Trust and injected $1 trillion in liquidity and reserves to help the economy overcome shocks.”
Georgieva added, “The IMF creates fiscal space and then World Bank can bring powerful investments.” It was around this time that Georgieva invoked the lyrics of “This is How We Do It” to emphasize the need for cooperation against the common threat of climate change. She did assure everyone, “The majority of people are kind and good and helpful of each other.”
What gets attention these days, though, isn’t necessarily what a majority of people want, say and do. Earlier in the day, during the third Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit, co-hosted by the Earthshot Prize and Bloomberg Philanthropies, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had warned that political leaders often do not represent what the majority of the population want and that polls have shown that the majority of people around the world do want more action to address the climate crisis. Combine these observations with clear evidence of the climate crisis getting progressively worse, and it wouldn’t be surprising for a lot of people to be skeptical about what will be done about the crisis. To all this, Georgieva did offer the following: “History is a zig zag, up and down, but the trajectory is upwards [when it comes to taking more action against climate change].” Carney also lent the following thoughts: “[People tend to] over-rationalize the past, over-dramatize the present and underestimate the future.”
The forum did highlight other actions that have been taken, including new hot-off-the-press ones. In the second panel discussion “Unlocking the Power of Climate Reporting: A New Frontier of Open Data,” Madera talked about plans for CDB and the Net-Zero Public Data Utility (NXDPU) to expand their existing partnership, which will make more reliable climate-related data available globally. Additionally, at the forum, the Global Capacity Building Coalition (GCBC) announced the launch of a beta version of a new digital platform to make climate finance capacity-building resources and programs more available to financial institutions, finance professionals, and others.
Once the four discussions were completed, a decidedly Presidential podium was brought on stage. Fonda was the first to speak at this podium, mentioning how addressing climate change would be her life’s work as long as the Earth would continue to have her. She had some choice words for the fossil fuel industry and credited Bloomberg for bringing people together to do more about climate change, calling his convening ability a “superpower.” Fonda then yielded the podium to Bloomberg, who then praised Biden’s climate change policies and said, “Starting on Joe’s first day in office, when he brought the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement. He has wisely put fighting climate change at the center of his work strengthening the economy – showing how the two go hand in hand.”
And the last person to move to the Presidential podium was the President himself, where Biden began by emphasizing the severity and urgency of the climate crisis. He talked of how he has “seen more acreage burned down to the ground than the state of Maryland.” Biden declared, “The climate is in crisis and one existential threat that faces all nations.” He then proceeded to recap the various climate-related policies that he put in place over the past four years. “The United States has reasserted America’s position as a global leader in climate,” Biden asserted. “We’re leading an all-out effort to partner with nations to reduce global emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 °C.” He drew connections between addressing the climate crisis and economic growth such as saying, “When I think of climate I think of jobs.”
Throughout his speech, he didn’t mention former U.S. President Donald Trump by name but did mention the words “my predecessor” several times. This included Biden recalling how his “predecessor” had pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords and asserting that “all the historic change [in climate action that took place over the past four years] is in stark contrast to my predecessor.” Biden also said, “When Kamala and I came into office, nothing was being done.” He emphasized too that “1727658636 the market for clean energy is booming” and “it’s time to go big.”
Three clear things emerged from this forum. One is that political discourse in general needs to take more of the tone echoed throughout this forum—where everyone acknowledges the magnitude and severity of the climate crisis and focuses on solutions and taking action. Two is that key organizations have been taking actions to address the climate crisis. However, the third clear thing is that the current actions alone are not going to be enough. There are still too many political and business leaders trying to prevent more from being done to address this crisis, which in recent years has gone from urgent to really urgent to really, really urgent. Yet, still too many people remain apathetic to this crisis. And this definitely is not how we should do it, baby.
