Mark Carney urges $130T for global climate fight. But from where?

U.N. climate envoy and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney has pulled together an alliance of financers holding US$130 trillion is assets to fight climate change.

With national leaders gone from the U.N. climate conference in Scotland, attention turned on Wednesday to the state treasuries and the businesses and financiers responsible for carrying out the pledges to cut emissions and build infrastructure.

A main aim of the COP26 talks is to secure enough national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions – mostly from burning ubiquitous fossil fuels – to avert the worst climate disasters by keeping the rise in the global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But how exactly to meet those pledges, particularly in the developing world — is still being worked out. Above all, it will need a lot of money.

Among the most vexing questions are who should pay and how the funds can be channeled through the financial system quickly and effectively. A major goal will be to attract more private money.

The issues are so important that organizers dedicated all of Wednesday for executives and public finance leaders to discuss them.

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero – an umbrella group that includes all the major Western banks as well as insurers and asset managers – announced that firms responsible for managing $130 trillion in capital, equivalent to 40 per cent of the world’s financial assets, had signed up to assuming a “fair share” of decarbonization.

U.N. climate envoy and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, who pulled the alliance together, said it needed to find creative ways to channel private money purposefully into investment that advanced the U.N.-backed drive for ‘net zero’ greenhouse emissions by 2050.

“The money is here – but that money needs net zero-aligned projects and (then) there’s a way to turn this into a very, very powerful virtuous circle – and that’s the challenge,” he told the summit.