What happened at New York Climate Week?

Welcome back to Sustainable Views, the podcast looking at sustainability policy and regulation in depth. I'm Philippa Nuttall, editor of Sustainable Views. Today, I'm going to be talking to acting deputy editor Elizabeth Meager about her time in New York for New York Climate Week. Hi, Elizabeth. Hello. So with Donald Trump back in the White House and his extraordinary deregulation effort touching every area of US energy, environmental policy, and resilience efforts, It must have been an odd week over in the US. Well, what was the atmosphere like?

Well, it was my first climate week, so that is one caveat, but everyone did say it felt slightly different. One thing was obviously Trump's speech at the UN on, I think it was Tuesday. People just tried to pretend that that didn't happen. It was a very odd kind of mental gymnastics, I think I called it, where people were just kind of pressing on, as we've been hearing all year. People are just carrying on as they were, trying to pretend that the government isn't the government, that nothing matters. Obviously, this felt slightly disingenuous. Some people did insist that nothing about changes to federal policy have changed their business. Others did admit that it was a problem, but said, you know, looking for the positives, this administration is has made it very clear that they're willing to clear regulatory hurdles for permitting projects. So, you know, ex-renewables, if you've got a big infrastructure project that you want to get done, obviously for data centers, nuclear power, then it's all systems go.

Okay, so it's kind of interesting what you said there. So there is sort of a little bit of positive news, I suppose, for certain people, perhaps especially the, the kind of bigger projects. But you also sort of mentioned this feeling that people are almost consciously pretending that the broader political environment isn't real. I mean, is that correct, and why do you think they're doing that?

Yeah, I think it's a combination of things. On one level, I think that businesses probably feel that there's little to gain from complaining. This is obviously a government that isn't particularly interested in the concerns of people interested in sustainable investing or renewable energy, and so maybe they feel that this kind of pushing back against the government doesn't get them anywhere. But I also can't overstress the fear that a lot of business businesses feel around speaking out against the government. And this came up consistently in conversations all week. Also at events, I would say this was arguably one of the least live-streamed events since COVID An awful lot of events weren't offering a live stream, weren't recording. Some were Chatham House. So when I got there, Jimmy Kimmel had been taken off the air. He was kind of reinstated during my trip, and there were lots of people on the streets handing out flyers. Asking you to sign a petition to get him back on the air. But it was a really stark reminder kind of hanging over the week of what can happen if you say something the government doesn't like, and no one really wants that on their back.

Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because you said businesses feel that there's little to gain from complaining, and yet Trump's mantra is very much that he's pro-business. But clearly, in terms of the businesses you were talking to, you know, he's not pro them. And in terms of, yeah, clean tech, anything really to do with climate or the environment, he's not supporting those businesses or businesses that have sort of worked to become more sustainable. And you've written in various articles that whatever the politics, the economics, at least globally, means that the clean energy transition will continue. We see electric vehicle sales are increasing everywhere, and this is likely to only go in one direction. And so you said that businesses didn't want to speak out, but did you get any sense of frustration that what Trump is doing doesn't make sense in terms of climate change or sustainability, but it also doesn't make economic or business sense, at least in the slightly longer term.

Well, yes, it definitely doesn't make sense in terms of climate change, but also, yeah, as you say, economics or business for most companies operating in the US. Obviously there are some that will be happy, but one lawyer did say, you know, I can't think of a single business, certainly that she advises, that is happy about this. It's hard not to spend entire meetings trying to psychoanalyse Donald Trump. And I know like dozens of books have tried to do that over the past decade, probably longer. There's various theories, obviously, that if he's not kind of business-led, then he's grievance-led. He's practising a politics of nostalgia. There's also this theory that fossil fuels are about masculinity, that real men burn things. And obviously this story that he didn't really like the look of wind turbines on his golf course in Scotland.

They're ugly, they don't work, they kill your birds, they're bad for the environment, and if you look at them from a house, your house is worth less than 50%. So I'm trying to have people learn about wind real fast, and I think I've done a good job, but not good enough because some countries are still trying and they're, they're destroying themselves.

Obviously We could do this forever, but where does it get anyone?

Yeah, I'm not sure that psychoanalysis is probably the bread and butter of sustainable views, though sometimes I think we should delve into a bit of that and probably in terms of behavioral change within companies and how psychoanalysis can help with that. But do you think there's any kind of expectation of any kind of backlash against these policies? Policies? I mean, I don't mean from activists, but from businesses actually starting to stand up as a collective voice and saying, you know, this is not what we want?

I don't unfortunately feel hugely confident that that is coming. Obviously, this administration is incredibly unpredictable, and as some people have said, it's quite vindictive. And while, you know, lots of companies are happy to say on background that they're not happy with what the government is doing. They also have investors to answer to, employees to pay. It's companies that are kind of going through a merger or anything that requires regulatory approval are obviously particularly vulnerable, and that was kind of the background to the Jimmy Kimmel situation. But the risk is high for anyone with exposure to the US, which is arguably, you know, every big business in the world. I've mentioned this crisis management lawyer, that I met with, which was like a super interesting meeting while I was there. And they said various things about how quiet this time of year has been compared to previous years because people just aren't wanting to get into crises full stop. They're really playing it much more conservatively. And they talked a lot about this kind of balancing of risks that companies are having to do at the moment. No one outside of the core wealthy circle surrounding the president, she says, is happy with what's going on, but they have to decide which risk is bigger, whether it's standing up and speaking out or keeping quiet. And, you know, some people would say that keeping quiet and letting this happen is a bigger risk, but I guess in the short term it maybe doesn't feel that way. One more thing on that is I met with an asset manager this week who was talking about the strength that actually non-US-headquartered businesses and investors have in this situation, particularly if they don't have any kind of US government contracts. He was also saying that asset owners like pension funds are arguably in kind of the strongest position, as their end client is the general public. And what the federal government in the US is doing is, you know, not great emissions-wise, certainly for the general public anywhere. So he kind of made the point that if NGOs are looking for someone to pressure to try and encourage to speak out, they would be a good place to go.

Subscribe to Sustainable Views to access our policy tracker to source insight and data on specific policies, including changes, deadlines, and guidance. The policy tracker allows you to search for information on more than 2,600 sustainability-linked provisions globally and to click through to our news, views, trend analysis, and deep dives. That gives you the power to see what regulatory changes mean for you and your business. Find out more by emailing sustainable.views@ft.com. That's sustainable.views@ft.com. Sustainable Views as a service from the Financial Times.

Yeah, it's interesting as well, you mentioned the pressure that could come potentially from the outside because I mean, from an— I'm based in Brussels, from an EU perspective, it seems that the EU is moving in the opposite direction. I mean, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President, said yesterday in Copenhagen at the big competitive summit that we don't just just wants simplification in Europe. Now she actively said for the first time, I think it was, that she wants deregulation, which is very much in line with what the US has been lobbying for towards the EU, this sort of watering down of various bits of sustainability legislation. So at the moment, at any rate, it doesn't really seem, at least from the EU standpoint, that there's going to be much standing up to the, to the US or trying to push things in their direction. But yeah, let's, let's see what happens. And, and with that, I mean, I, I'm very aware that we often go down this sort of very negative, um, spiral at the moment, the doom spiral. Indeed, indeed. And Ani Dasgupta, who's been working on sustainability for a long time, who's the CEO and president of the World Resources Institute, one of the big US NGOs working on sustainability, and his book that he published last month was all about rebuilding optimism around climate action. So it wasn't denying what was happening in the US, but it was really the sense that there is a space for optimism optimism and moving forward. And did you get any sense at New York Climate Week that this is possible in the US or more widely even at the moment? And were there any sort of glimmers of not necessarily hope, but sort of optimism or things sort of still moving despite the really difficult geopolitical situation in the US?

I think people are trying to, and I do think that that hope or, um, kind of drive towards optimism is part of what's encouraging, uh, this silence, uh, in terms of criticizing the government. I think people really are trying to say, okay, this is where we are, we're not going to get anywhere complaining about it, so what, what do we— what can we do in the meantime? And as you said, the economics of the transition remain true. And one big strength for wind and solar is that they are at a point where they legitimately can be rolled out at scale and affordably. You know, they don't need government subsidies, although those government subsidies were extremely helpful. There is a much bigger question around kind of earlier stage technologies, but that is what many are kind of clinging onto right now as a moment of hope. I know kind of Texas has become, I think, a bigger solar capital than California. You know, the economics are panning out. So that's positive. Nuclear, the economics are obviously less strong, but the big positive there is that the administration is very keen on it. I know, as we've written about recently, one source kind of very close to Donald Trump said that they view nuclear as more American than wind and solar, which make of that what you will. But one tech company that is kind of building out a lot of data centers at the moment told me that every American utility is at the moment kind of are frantically going through their nuclear assets, their inventory, trying to find something that they could potentially bring online or bring back online because there's such a buzz around nuclear at the moment. So there are small kind of pockets. And there was also a lot of talk about the focus on grassroots, particularly from kind of ex-US federal government figures like Gina McCarthy, who was administrator of the EPA and is now co-chair of America Is All In. And that organization is much more focused at the kind of city, state, municipality level this time around. And I think that they're really hoping to kind of build up grassroots support for climate action.

And within that, are there sort of local energy projects that they're looking at, not just support, but also kind of looking at energy perhaps on a different level rather than these big projects from the past?

Yeah, so there's a lot that states can do without the federal government, and that's a kind of, you know, historic fact of the way that the US is set up. They do have a lot of kind of independence. Obviously, the federal government has tried to pick away at that as well. But states do have a fair bit of power in that sense. And yet, you know, there was talk of kind of like super local rooftop solar projects. And also, I think, you know, it's about encouraging people, educating people, encouraging people to come together in groups. And kind of regrouping for the midterms.

And I mean, while we're recording this, the US government is obviously in shutdown. So depending on how long that continues for, perhaps we'll see more action at a state level. And then obviously the next big climate meeting will be COP30 in Belém in Brazil next month. Did you get any sense from the delegates at New York Climate Week how they're planning to approach this? I mean, it's obviously the event of the year that people tend to go to. I've heard, you know, for various reasons, people saying, I'm not going to go this year, the cost implications. But did you get a sense that it was still seen as a key event for businesses? And did anybody you speak to in New York share any thoughts in terms of what they felt should be happening there, in particular from a business point of view?

Not so much compared to previous years, I would say. I think, yeah, the issues with hosting it in Bellum have been kind of very well publicized. There were an awful lot of people saying that, you know, they tried but they just couldn't make it work financially, or maybe they were sending a much smaller delegation than they usually would. And an awful lot of people that I asked were choosing to just stay at home. An increasingly popular sentiment that I am hearing is that COP, the whole kind of UNFCCC process, goes back to being just for governments. And then New York Climate Week, you know, maybe one day London Climate Week, becomes the kind of the event that's more for businesses. I think that couldn't be a bad thing, not least just logistically. I think moving COPs around is not great kind of resources emissions-wise. New York is obviously set up to be able to host an awful lot of people. And in general, it all did run very smoothly. So I think that, yeah, no one's kind of expecting this to be a big breakthrough year.

No, indeed not. And I mean, yeah, you've raised lots of very interesting questions there about COP, which we should perhaps discuss in a podcast closer to POC. But this idea of businesses actually needing direct access to politicians and whether COP is the right place for that to be happening. And I think I saw yesterday, the day before, that Australia and Turkey are suggesting they could potentially share the next COP, which in terms of Zooming back and forth between the two doesn't sound particularly sustainable, but let's see what happens there. Thanks, Lizzie. That was really, really interesting. And yeah, plenty more to catch up on in the weeks and months ahead in terms of what's happening in the US and the impacts that the changes in the US are having, not just locally or domestically, but also on the rest of the world. To keep up with climate regulation and the impacts of politics everywhere on climate action and the clean energy transition, Be sure to sign up for a free trial of Sustainable Views and our daily newsletter at sustainableviews.com. We will be back with another episode later this month.