1.5 Degrees Is Confirmed Gone. Here's What Businesses Do Now. | WC 7 Sept 2026

Hey, thanks so much for listening. I would love to be able to help you more on what it is that you are listening to and why you're listening to, to me. If you could click on the link in the show notes, that would be awesome because it will help me define what it is that we should be talking about on this podcast. So, Before we start, the UN has just confirmed 1.5 degrees is gone. Not eventually, now. This is big news. The best-case scenario in their latest report puts us at 1.8 degrees of warming. But stay to the end because we're buried— because buried in this week's news is the number that should stop every CFO in their tracks. We're talking about a loss and damage fund that has delivered $485 million against a projected need of $580 billion by 2030. This week in sustainability, here are your top 10 stories ranked by what the world is talking about most. Number 10. Green wins worth celebrating. This is relevant for all sectors. Positive proof points that decarbonisation is moving in the real world, not just on paper. This week delivered a cluster of wins. UK electric car sales hit their highest August on record. Uber and Wave launched the the UK's first all-electric self-driving taxis in London. Maersk piloted a wind-assisted sail on a container ship in what it's calling a world first. It's brilliant, this. It kind of makes me laugh that we're going back to the, um, old days and pre-1900s, but, um, you know, what comes around goes around. But equally, the technology— I had a mate who worked in the technology on these big kites and sails, and it's absolutely amazing to watch. Have a look at it. And in Cornwall, geothermal engineering scaled battery-grade lithium production, and the first cohort of 18 UK firms achieved the new stricter B Corp standard. Progress is real, and it's faster than the headlines suggest. Number 9, France hits Shein and Temu with the new fashion fast— fast fashion levy. This is relevant for media, marketing, and advertising. Your clients in retail and e-commerce are watching this closely, and the EU is not done. France began enforcing a per-item levy on ultra-fast fashion from the 1st of September. Targeting Shein, Temu, and AliExpress. In 2026, the charge ranges from €0.50 for underwear to €12 for a jacket, rising to €19.50 per item by 2030. Imports of small Chinese parcels into the EU have already fallen 30-40% since the EU's own separate €3 levy came into force in July. The market disruption for brands advertising in France and across Europe is already being felt, and it is moving in one direction. Number eight always makes me laugh when you say one direction. Not that I ever listen to them, but probably a really good name for a band, isn't it? Oh, there you go. Number eight: A U.S. federal judge killed New York's seventy-five. Billion-dollar climate bill. This is relevant to all organizations, and this is warning about the limits of climate litigation in the current US political environment. A federal judge struck down New York State's Climate Change Superfund Act, which would have charged fossil fuels companies $75 billion over 25 years for climate-related damages. The Trump administration welcomed the decision, but climate litigation is accelerating across Europe and the UK. And in the courts of public opinion, the pressure on large emitters is only growing. The legal route to accountability isn't closed; it's being redirected. Number seven: The AfD wins historic German state election on a climate denial platform. Platform. This is relevant to organizations with European operations. Policy risk is moving faster than most scenarios plans have accounted for. The far right Alternative for Germany secured 44% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, more than doubling its support. The party wants to exit the Paris Agreement and expand fossil fuel production. This doesn't hand them national power, but it's a warning shot for mainstream politics across France, Italy, Spain, and beyond. When cost-of-living pressure is high enough, climate action becomes a political target. That changes the business environment for organisations operating across Europe. Number 6. China's solar capacity surpassed coal for the first time in history. This is relevant for all sectors, and this is one of the most significant structural shifts in global energy in decades. China's installed solar power capacity hit 1.286 billion kilowatts as of July 2026, edging past coal-fired power at 1.285 billion kilowatts. China installed a record 315 gigawatts of solar and 119 gigawatts of wind last year alone, over 80% of all newly installed power capacity. Coal generation actually fell in 2025, even as the overall power demand rose. The first time that's happened on record. The shift in the world's largest emitter reshapes the global energy story. Number 5, the UK's food system is showing serious structural stress. This is directly relevant to food and beverage. Supply chain resilience and food security are no longer abstract risks. The UK National Audit Office warned this week that Britain has done too little to prepare for climate-driven food shortages. Farmers have lost £4.8 billion from 3 consecutive poor harvests. Summer 2026 has been confirmed as the UK's hottest on record. Heatwaves drove UK hospitality sector energy costs up £95 million. For food and beverage businesses, the raw material volatility we've been discussing for years is becoming structural. The question isn't whether your supply chain will be affected now, it's when. Number 4: The clean energy paradox. Record investments, still rising emissions. This is relevant across all sectors. A record €1.9 trillion invested in clean energy only covered 40% of the growth in demand. The rest came from fossil fuels. The Energy Transition Commission revealed what they're calling a paradox of progress. Global clean energy investment hit a record €1.9 trillion, yet it met only 40% of the increase in energy demand. Data center energy consumption grew 17% in 2025 and is set to double by 2030. For organizations in MMA relying on digital infrastructure, this is your carbon footprint growing in the background, whether you're measuring it or not. Global emissions are now plateauing rather than falling, putting the world on course for 2.5 degrees. Number 3, Nepal, 1,252 Dead. 4,200 missing. $5 billion in damage. And the loss and damage fund has $485 million. It's been absolutely horrific what's been going on. And we have a part to play, and we can help the change. This is relevant to every organization operating globally. The Loss and Damage Fund was created for exactly this. Its failure to deliver is a systemic risk signal. On the 26th of August, a section of glacial ice up to 1.3 kilometres wide detached from a peak in Nepal's Himalayas. The resulting flood killed over 1,252 people and has left 4,200 people missing, and is estimated to cost $5 billion. This is roughly a tenth of Nepal's entire economy. Nepal's foreign minister said, we are shifting our diplomatic framework from aid to justice and compensation. The Loss and Damage Fund established at COP28 has received pledges of $822 million. It has delivered $485 million. The projected need by 2030 is actually $580 billion, not million. Number 2, the supersized El Niño, a live stress test for every single supply chain on Earth. This is directly relevant to food and beverage. 50 million people could be pushed into acute hunger. Coffee prices are already rising. Wildfires, droughts, and typhoons are all intensifying simultaneously. The UN's World Meteorological Organization has described this El Niño as the strongest since at least 1950, potentially by large, by a large margin. Sea surface temperatures in the Pacific key monitoring region are well over 2 degrees above average. Below the surface is, in some places, they are more than 8 degrees above normal. The WMO says the event could last until at least February 2027. Indonesia wildfires have burned more than 107,000 hectares. The Panama Canal has cut traffic by more than 10%. The World Food Programme warned in August that El Niño would push 50 million people into acute hunger next year. Number 1, 1.5 degrees is gone. Now the question is how far past it, it we go. And this is relevant to any organization with a net zero commitment. The context for your targets just changed. Overshoot is now the planning assumption, not the worst case. The UN event program confirmed this week what scientists have been tracking for years: limiting warming to 1.5 degrees is no longer achievable. The report projects a best-case scenario of 1.8 degrees. Without rapid action, 2.5 degrees. The recommended strategy is now overshoot, peak, and decline, breaching the threshold, then working to pull temperatures back. The UNEP is clear: scaling renewables to 60-70% of global electricity by 2030, cutting methane urgently, and reducing demand are the levers we still have. None of them are off the table. It's been a pretty stark Top ten, hasn't it? This week. It's um. It's interesting, isn't it? We really do need to do more, and anyone listening to this, please do reach out and talk to me because I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear about what you're doing, and I would. You know, what can we, what can we do to communicate better? What can we do to do more? So I'm going to go on to the next, the top 3 mind-blowing environmental facts from this week. So I've pulled them out. And number 1, I think, is blatantly Nepal has lost almost a third of its total ice volume in 30 years. And glaciers there are now melting 65% faster in the last decade than the decade before. This came from UNDP, Bloomberg Green, and Euronews. Number 2, during this El Niño event, sea temperatures below the surface of the Pacific are in some places more than 8 degrees Celsius above the long-term average. The world has not measured anything like this before. This came from the BBC and WMO. And number 3, a study published in Nature Climate Change found that climate change has already reduced the ecological suitability for European bumblebees by an average of 5%, reaching up to 19% in some areas, with losses accelerating sharply since the 1980s as warming sped up. No pollinators, no food system. This came from Nature Climate Change, the journal, and the Université Libre de Brussels. I don't know why I put Brussels. Brussels. If you want to be a part of our network, please do DM me or comment below.

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