Investors bet big on climate fight but motives questioned

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — Governments and big investors announced fresh plans Wednesday to pour trillions of dollars into curbing global warming, reflecting the financial world's growing embrace of efforts to fight climate change as both a business necessity and opportunity.

But some social justice activists called for scrutiny of investors' motives, warning that the same financial institutions that profited from funding fossil fuel firms were now being presented as green champions.

There is a growing consensus that the private sector must be involved if the world is to avoid catastrophic global warming. Speaking at the U.N. climate summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow, Britain's Treasury chief Rishi Sunak said that while countries such as his are stumping up more cash to fund the shift to low carbon economies around the world, "public investment alone isn't enough."

He praised a pledge Wednesday by a group of over 450 major financial institutions to align their investments with the 2015 Paris climate accord — which calls for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and other efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

"This is a historic wall of capital for the net-zero transition around the world," Sunak said at the conference known as COP26.

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero — launched this year by former Bank of England chief Mark Carney — promised to follow scientific guidelines for cutting carbon emissions to "net zero" by 2050.

That goal — which means limiting greenhouse gas emissions to the amount that can be absorbed again through natural or artificial ways — is increasingly being embraced by companies and governments around the world.