That’s a big ask, but not an impossible one, said Achim Steiner, administrator of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in a Reuters Newsmaker interview on Earth Day.

Steiner is hopeful about the future, he said, because “on the one hand, we have an understanding of what is happening; but on the other hand, we have choices as no generation before us has had. We have more technology, we have more science, we have more wealth in the world — all of which we can deploy to make different choices and pathways possible.”

A cost too high

As hopeful as he is, however, Steiner is also a clear-eyed realist. “We are perhaps 10 years away from no turning back, and the implications of that are extraordinary,” Steiner explained. “We are essentially condemning hundreds of generations to not having an option of reversing a set of decisions premised on the spurious argument that cheap access to fossil fuels is a fundamental human right.”

The human cost of inaction on climate change is difficult to quantify, but a report released on Earth Day by insurance giant took a stab at putting a number on the economic cost: $23 trillion. That’s the global gut punch Swiss Re estimates the world economy will take if 2050 climate targets are not met and the future becomes an endless battle against rising seas, falling crop yields, collapsing ecosystems, deadly pandemics, and more extreme and unpredictable weather patterns.

The stakes couldn’t be much higher, Steiner noted, but he also sees signs of progress.

Steiner cited President Joe Biden’s Earth Day pledge to cut U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030, along with promises of action from the world’s two leading polluters, China and India, as indications that global leaders are approaching a consensus on climate change. Recent proclamations by the and the International Monetary Fund imploring investors to include climate risk in their decision-making criteria is another sign that “everyone is coming together and pulling in the right direction,” he said.

Still, there is an extraordinary amount of work to be done in an extremely short time frame, Steiner warned, and much of this work requires re-thinking the guiding paradigms of global capitalism. “Financing this transformation cannot just become a debate about who is responsible for paying for what — that’s a zero sum game, a failure from the start,” Steiner said. Instead, he proposes that nations need to develop a more cooperative “co-investment” mindset that prompts different kinds of decision-making and more long-range awareness about which policies are really in a country’s best interests.

Take the situation in Africa, for example. There, 600 million people do not have access to electricity, Steiner noted, so for African governments, creating access to electricity is a top priority, one that will accelerate development on all fronts. “Is it so difficult for us to envision co-investing with African governments right now in a massive increase in access to electricity, but doing it with a renewable energy infrastructure?” Steiner asked.

It had better not be, because the alternative is unthinkable, he insisted. “Imagine 2 billion African citizens by 2050 using the fossil-fuel matrix of Europe or the U.S. in the 20th century. You can forget about the Paris Agreement” and all the other efforts to mitigate climate change, he warned. “We will have lost the battle.”

Public & private cooperation

If one is looking for evidence that the world’s wealthiest nations still aren’t taking climate change seriously, one need only look at how difficult it has been for the United Nations to collect the $100 billion per year pledged in the Paris Agreement, he added. This pledge was made by developed countries to help developing countries combat climate change. Yet, considering the trillions of dollars being mobilized in the midst of a pandemic, the fact that the world’s wealthiest nations can’t come up with $100 billion per year to co-invest in infrastructure for developing countries only illustrates their lack of commitment, Steiner suggested.

As important as mobilizing governments is, however, relying on them to solve the climate problem without the cooperation of the private sector is another losing proposition, he observed. Given that there are more than 40,000 companies in the world, most of which are small businesses, Steiner posed an important question: “How do you get this disparate group of actors that define the vast majority of our economic decisions every day to be aligned, supported, and ultimately incentivized to be part of the solution — rather than saying the state is going to fix the problem, so we’ll continue to serve our shareholders?”

Steiner described shareholder tunnel vision as an unfortunate “anachronism” of outdated business priorities, and said that too many influential players in the financial markets are “investing too many of our financial resources into a 20th-century economy.”

In 2015, the United Nations took an important step toward uniting the goals of the public and private sectors when it published its , which contains the now infamous 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that U.N. member states have ostensibly pledged to pursue. Steiner dismissed those who complain that 17 SDGs is too many. “Welcome to reality!” he said. “When you share a planet with 9 billion people, and have to manage their consumption, their environment, and their systems, it is more complex.”

Governments and companies don’t have to take on all 17 SDGs at once, Steiner explained, adding that to get started, they can pick one or two and focus on those. But companies that have embraced the U.N.’s SDGs and woven them into their business plans are playing an important leading role in establishing how companies can forge a responsible, sustainable — and yes, profitable — future.

“Companies that have embraced SDGs are asking themselves: ‘What kind of society do we want to live in, and what are we going to do about it?’” Steiner said.

Steiner’s bottom line: If we want to keep celebrating Earth Day, these are the questions all of us need to be asking.

To limit warming to 1.5 degrees, the world must reduce emissions by 7.6% every year from now. In other words, we’ve made progress, but not enough, and much of it was driven by a global pandemic.

How should we — as citizens and business leaders — react to that data? Should we down tools and give up? This week, with all the noise surrounding Earth Day, I aim to resist pessimism, encouraged that competition is intensifying and the pace of technological breakthroughs is quickening. I also recommit to resisting complacency. It is still very much time for action.

Today we share that ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê reduced emissions by 93% from 2018 and set for the , which our CEO and leadership set shortly after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, when climate change would have been easy to dismiss as a far-off threat. We are now aligned to the 1.5-degrees pathway, along with at latest count.

It is good to make progress — by paying a premium for the limited renewable power available in the grid, we are creating demand for more to be produced, which will stimulate further demand and innovation. Officially, we are now carbon neutral, but embedding reductions in how we operate will be much harder, so that is the conversation we are having — and why we are working with our vendors to help them lead, summarized in our supplier sustainability statement.

This year on Earth Day, we aim to resist pessimism and are encouraged that competition is intensifying and the pace of technological breakthroughs is quickening.

People sometimes ask how relevant climate is to ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê and our customers. Our business is focused largely on legal, tax and media professionals. We don’t directly operate in the most carbon-intensive sectors like energy, transportation, or agriculture. Even so, the question is baffling. Climate action is about global well-being. If this last year has not shown us that our global economies, health systems and futures are intertwined — mutually dependent regardless of national borders — what will?

Hundreds of thousands of our business customers are at the heart of whether progress will or won’t be made on any difficult topic. Legal systems hold us all to account. Taxation systems fund national and international action. Global, independent journalists arm people with hard facts and report on the pace (or absence) of action.

We aspire to power the world’s most informed professionals as one of the world’s leading content-driven technology companies, so we should also look to other businesses. Huge companies — Microsoft and Amazon to name two — are engaged in a race to reach net-zero carbon emissions.

Microsoft said that it would , aiming to remove more carbon than it emits each year. Amazon, not historically known for its focus on climate, created a $2 billion fund to drive climate innovation and .

You can hardly blink for . In just the last few days, JP Morgan said it would commit $2.5 trillion to climate action and sustainable development in the next 10 years. Power companies are . Apple just created .

Sceptics say, “too little, too late,” but action matters. Data disclosure is now commonplace and most companies and have published plans of action. They are responding to customer and consumer concern — Yale recently published new research estimating that of people living in the U.S. think climate change is happening and will harm future generations.

As you sustainability, you’d be forgiven for feeling lost at times for how to interpret all the information. Efforts to make that simpler are underway. Our customers — EY, Deloitte, PWC, and KPMG — have accelerated their collaboration to with the World Economic Forum and the International Business Council.

It’s great to see competing businesses, working together. Initiatives like the are gaining traction. It is a collaborative effort that ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê employees helped found for lawyers to develop new contracts and model laws to help address climate change.

None of this was the case a decade ago, so we believe there’s reason for optimism.

However positive you may (or may not) feel this week, we will continue to convene experts, explore the toughest questions — and keep professionals informed. In June, Reuters will host a of leading climate experts and business leaders. Join us.

For more information on ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê commitment to Earth Day, learn how to take part in the ; or read Reuters eye-opening piece revealing the scientists dedicated to climate; or read more about ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê work in sustainability, community engagement, and driving access to justice and transparency in the company’s 2020 Social Impact Report; and view ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê’ supplier diversity & sustainability statement.

Not only is this the right thing to do on an environmental basis, but it’s what our employees and customers are asking us to do. In committing to these goals, we are taking a big step forward towards an environmentally responsible and sustainable future. As a global organization, we have a shared responsibility to do business in ways that respect, protect, and benefit our customers, employees, communities, and environment.

Over the past eight years, ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê has consistently reduced our carbon footprint through a focus on streamlining processes, systems, and locations. By doing so, we are now able to commit to:

• Offsetting 100% of ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê’ greenhouse gas emissions by 2019 and supporting carbon mitigation projects around the world;
• Sourcing renewable energy for 100% of our global energy needs by 2020; and
• Setting science-based carbon reduction targets which will be audited externally to ensure international standards are being met.

As a global organization, we have a shared responsibility to do business in ways that respect, protect, and benefit our customers, employees, communities, and environment.

We are proud to have undertaken a carbon offset strategy which is geographically informed by our global footprint. As a result, the carbon offsets will have positive impacts worldwide, including in our major markets of: Brazil, Canada, India, and the U.S. In support of the transition to sourcing 100% renewable energy by the end of 2020, we will explore strategies that encourage immediate action, including working with local utilities and competitive electricity market providers, among other renewable options.

Launching the TR Green 2020 Challenge

But we aren’t stopping here — we know we can do more. Next year marks the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day, so today we also are launching a global impact challenge with our employees, TR Green 2020. With this challenge, we are asking all our employees across the globe to help us answer the following key question: “How can ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê become more sustainable by 2020?”

On this Earth Day, we are proud to work in partnership with our employees, our customers, and our communities to ensure a more sustainable future for us all.

Click here to learn more about ¶¶ÒőłÉÄê’ sustainability practices.