Here, as elsewhere, the increasing urgency of the climate agenda has put a growing focus on the controversial voluntary carbon offset market.
But if an effective global market in offsets is to take shape, widely accepted international standards will prove crucial.
A former US securities regulator, Nazareth is co-chair of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, a global governance body set up in September to outline clear standards for the sector.
The Integrity Council grew out of the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, a body spearheaded by Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, and Standard Chartered chief executive Bill Winters.
Nazareth insisted that the new council was prioritising quality over market growth.
The body, however, is still deciding its position on some issues such as “avoidance” — credits awarded to projects that conserve forests, on the basis that they would otherwise have been partly destroyed.
Nazareth hit back against such complaints, saying that only three — BP, Standard Chartered and offset certification company Verra — of the council’s 23 seats are reserved for market participants, who she said could offer valuable practical input.
In recent months I have been harboring a guilty secret: I’m suffering from “numbers fatigue”.
This averages out to $9.2tn each year, or $3.5tn increased spending annually, which is bigger than previous estimates because it includes land-use issues alongside energy costs.
But what is even more sobering is that McKinsey thinks the costs will need to be much bigger in early years.
And since McKinsey consultants earn their living not just by measuring problems — but by offering solutions — the event was rife with determinedly optimistic interventions.
And Mark Carney, UN climate envoy, noted that it was proving equally difficult to get the “pipes” of international finance working to move the oodles of private sector funds sitting in the developed world to the emerging markets.
Let us all hope that McKinsey keeps scaring us all; the establishment, which it represents, needs to get shocked.
Raskin did not address oil and gas companies directly, but said that “it is inappropriate for the Fed to make credit decisions and allocations based on choosing winners and losers”.
Toomey sensed a flip-flop.
Only 3 per cent of 4,400 assessed global companies are aligned with a future of net zero by 2050 based on their emissions reductions targets, according to research from Moody’s.
Today, she writes, it would count as embracing the circular economy, an increasingly important concept within the sustainable investing space.