Press release: Resurgence of populism turns climate spotlight back on private companies

Journalists sitting and writing in notepads

08 Jan 2024

Gresham College’s Frank Jackson Foundation Professor of the Environment Myles Allen to give free lecture on Tuesday, 14 January, online and in central London 

There are now just 25 years left before most advanced economies are aiming to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions. But with the return of Donald Trump to the White House, and a resurgence of populism worldwide, most national climate policies are static or backtracking.  

The lecture will contend that, faced with political backsliding in the past, campaigners turned their attention to private companies, backed by threats of divestment, consumer boycotts and even lawsuits. 

Are companies better equipped these days to shrug off climate pressure? Have years of effort developing tools to measure corporate progress to net zero unintentionally made it harder to influence the decisions that matter? 

These are among the questions that will be asked by a top academic preparing to give his first lecture of 2025 at London’s historic Gresham College.  

Professor Myles Allen will be speaking just days before the second inauguration of Donald Trump and the annual gathering of world business leaders in Davos – and weeks after the COP29 conference agreed a package of $300 billion (£237 billion) per year by 2035 to help developing countries decarbonise and cope with the climate emergency, a figure dwarfed by the private investment flows required to finance the energy transition worldwide. 

In his talk, Professor Allen will argue that, while private capital and enterprise have a crucial role to play, dividing the world into “good” and “bad” investors and companies is ultimately counterproductive.  

Professor Allen asks: “‘Science-based targets’ for companies and investors have helped call out bad practices, but can they incentivise good? Or do they instead drive ‘brown-scraping’ – concentrating polluting assets into ever more unaccountable entities?  

“We need to move on from the idea of decarbonising companies and investment portfolios and refocus on activities and products. At the end of the day, every company needs a plan to stop the services and the products they sell from causing global warming by 2050.  

“Investors need to know what these plans are, and how they will affect that company’s long-term profitability. Promising to stop selling whatever-it-is after the current CEO retires helps neither shareholders nor the climate. The rest is details.” 

Achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will limit global warming to well below 2ºC, markedly reducing the risks of climate change.  

Professor Allen will argue that shareholder capitalism is perfectly capable of delivering net zero, along with the wants of 10 billion people, but only with a radical rethink of corporate responsibilities, backed by regulation, to focus on fixing products and services rather than company-wide metrics.  

The lecture will be given at Gresham College in Holborn, London on Tuesday, 14 January 2025. Starting at 6pm, entry is free and is also broadcast live online. It will last an hour.  

In-person places can be booked online via Gresham College’s website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/net-zero-private

Gresham College is London’s oldest higher education institution. Founded in 1597 under the will of Sir Thomas Gresham, it has been delivering free public lectures for over 420 years from a lineage of leading professors and experts in their field who have included Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Iannis Xenakis and Sir Roger Penrose. 

ENDS 

 

Notes to Editors  

Images available on request

For more information about this story or to arrange an interview with a Gresham Professor please contact: Phil Creighton press@gresham.ac.uk   

About Gresham College  
Gresham College has been providing free, educational lectures - at the university level - since 1597 when Sir Thomas Gresham founded the college to bring Renaissance Learning to Londoners. Our history includes some of the luminaries of the scientific revolution including Robert Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren and connects us to the founding of the Royal Society.  

Today we carry on Sir Thomas's vision. The College aims to stimulate intellectual curiosity and to champion academic rigour, professional expertise and freedom of expression. www.gresham.ac.uk  

Gresham College is a registered charity number 1039962 and relies on donations to help us encourage people's love of learning for many years to come. For more details or to make a gift, visit our website.

About the How Net Zero? series at Gresham College 
Achieving net zero is what it will take to halt global warming. If we can manage this by or soon after mid-century, we would limit overall warming to well below 2°C. Impacts would be serious, but likely not catastrophic. Can it be done, and without exacerbating political divisions? 

We are often told that climate change is a complex, “wicked” problem, requiring daunting social change. It is neither. Stopping fossil fuels from causing global warming requires safe, permanent disposal of all the carbon dioxide they generate. 

Delivering to the wants of 10 billion people is already a complex challenge, made only marginally more so if it is to be done without dumping that carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This lecture series explores how we can – and will – rise to this challenge.