Sustainable Investing History
NASA Scientist James Hansen told the US Senate that global warming was underway. He projected the global temperature increases to come from burning fossil fuels and urged that action be taken to reduce fossil fuel use. This was reported on the front page of the NY Times the next day with the sub-heading ” Sharp Cut in Burning of Fossil Fuels is Urged to Battle Shift in Climate”.
In articulating the thesis that this was a human-driven shift, and not the result of natural variation, Hansen outlined what would become the scientific consensus a few years later. 30 years later, Hansen’s projected scenarios of temperature change and resulting impacts have been proved eerily accurate.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) held its inaugural meeting in November 1988. The IPCC was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It was charged with providing ongoing assessments of:
- the state of scientific knowledge and information on climate change
- the environmental and socio-economic impacts of climate change
- strategies to meet the challenge of climate change
The first IPCC assessment report was issued in 1990.
The enactment of AB32 committed California to reduce GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The legislation empowered the California Air Resources Board to adopt regulations that would achieve “the maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective GHG emission reductions”. With this legislation, California was the first state to set legally-binding caps on GHG emissions.
California achieved the targets set by AB32 in 2016, four years ahead of the deadline.
The landmark American Clean Energy and Security Act, also known as the Waxman-Markey for its authors and sponsors, Henry Waxman (CA) and Ed Markey (MA), passed in the US House of Representatives. It was blocked and never voted on in the Senate. Had it been enacted, it would have established a national cap & trade systems to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Recognizing that our society and economy depend on natural capital – nature’s assets and the services they provide – the TNFD was established to “provide companies and financial institutions with a risk management and disclosure framework to identify, assess, manage and, where appropriate, disclose
nature-related issues”.
ISSB releases exposure drafts for two proposed initial standards to create a “comprehensive global baseline of sustainability-related disclosures designed to meet the information needs of investors in assessing enterprise value”
- S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information
- S2 Climate-related Disclosures
ISSB announces that it plans to build on SASB’s industry-based Standards and leverage SASB’s industry-based approach to standards development
150 nations met for the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Montreal, Canada. They agreed to set four goals and twenty-four 2030 targets to preserve, protect and rebuild global biodiversity, including:
- Protecting 30% of earth’s lands oceans, coastal areas & inland waters
- Reducing harmful annual government subsidies by $500 billion
- Cutting food waste in half
- Mobilizing $200 billion per year in biodiversity-related funding from all sources – public and private
The IPCC 6th assessment report on climate change clearly and unequivocally concludes that there are multiple, feasible and effective options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to human-caused climate change.
Cutting global GHG emissions by nearly half by 2030 is practical and achievable. Reducing emissions and implementing necessary adaptions to climate change will generate significant additional human and economic benefits by improving peoples’ health, well-being and livelihoods, reducing poverty and hunger and providing clean energy, water and air.
The Task Force for Nature-related Financial Disclosures released its final standards. The TNFD disclosure framework consists of conceptual foundations for nature-related disclosures, a set of general requirements, a set of recommended disclosures structured around the four recommendation pillars of governance, strategy, risk and impact management, and metrics and targets.
The 28th Conference of the Parties in Dubai completed a first “global stocktake” of the world’s status and progress since the Paris accords. Recognizing that progress has been insufficient to reach the goal of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees centrigrade, the concluding agreement called for countries to recommit to climate action.
The agreement confirmed the need for “deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5 °C pathways”. Countries were called upon to commit towards several specific targets, among other actions:
- Triple renewable energy capacity globally and double the global average
annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030 - Transition away from fossil fuels for energy in a “just, orderly and equitable manner” to reach net zero by 2050, with a specific call to accelerate action by 2030. This is the first time that ending fossil fuel use has been has been explicitly called for
- Substantially reduce methane emissions by 2030