The Conclusion of Climate Week? ‘The Tough Get Going.’

Heading into Climate Week NYC with more than 1,000 events—a record number—and the Trump Administration working overtime to undercut billions in renewable energy investments, and thousands of clean energy jobs, it was easy to feel “existential dread,” as one participant quipped.

But that turned out not to be the mood as more than 100,000 people streamed into Manhattan, and tens of thousands joined online. Instead, we saw determination, collaboration, ingenuity—even optimism.

Wedged between climate weeks in Hong Kong and Bangkok and coinciding with the United Nations General Assembly and global climate summit, the world has never seen such a collective push for a cleaner economy.

Climate Action Gets in Gear

Why optimism? Whether in climate science, investing, policy, participants expressed confidence that as the costs of renewable energy continue to drop, the green transition is inevitable, and now picking up speed.

Yes, climate change and the damaging effects of our fossil fuel dependence inevitably endanger our future, planet, and children. However, also inevitably, despite efforts by the Donald Trump administration to undermine climate awareness, more business people and policymakers are paying attention—and taking steps.

“The conversation has shifted,” wrote Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund founder turned climate investor who once ran for U.S. president. “It’s not whether change will happen, but how fast and how big.”

That energy was evident in New York. Packed panel discussions were bursting with ideas and insights about new solutions and new ways to finance them.

On the “Catalysts for Change” panel I moderated, Alix Lebec discussed collaborating with Impact Assets, the Cleo Institute, Sankari Studios, and others to develop new blended finance models to scale brilliant solutions that are developed around the world but that aren’t currently included in Wall Street or venture capital funding. Reckitt, a global company that makes everything from cleaning fluids to condoms, invested, generating both social and financial successes, Hamzah Sarwar, Global head of Social Impact & Innovation, told us.

Across town, Ashley Allen of i2 Capital, a rapidly emerging champion of bipartisan climate finance, convened a panel of finance experts at the World Resources Institute to discuss how to accelerate climate finance in the Trump era. It included a who’s who of finance executives including Jigar Shaw, David Widawsky, Nancy Pfund, Marc Pangburn, Emily Robichaux, Jon Abe, Jeff McAulay, and Aldric SEGUIN.

Climate Cartel or Inconvenient Truth?

CERES CEO Mindy Lubber, who has been so effective at working with businesses to recognize that “climate change, nature loss, water scarcity and pollution… all pose incalculable risks to capital markets, as well as unlimited opportunity” that U.S. House Republicans accused her of leading a “climate cartel,” explained in her opening remarks why the green transition is inevitable.

“These are financial issues,” Lubber said. “Businesses and investors know the truth: that acting on climate is no longer about compliance or reputation management. It’s about profit and resilience. It’s about materiality and not just morality. It is about jobs and the economy,” she said, “and building a clean energy revolution.”

Communications guru Wolfgang Blau of the Brunswick Group said Trump’s climate tirades are fooling no one except those who want to be fooled.

“Don’t confuse the political rhetoric in the U.S. about climate change with the corporate reality on the ground,” Blau says. “The energy transition in the U.S. keeps moving forward. Texas, of all places, has now installed more renewable energy capacity than any other state, even surpassing California. More than 25% of installed wind farm capacity is now in Texas, driven not by ideology but by cost advantages… Money talks.”

Speaking of Texas, Climate & Capital features “Three Unlikely Renewable Energy Leaders,” the second installment in our series highlighting the global acceleration of clean energy. We report what few would have believed just a few years ago, and what Trump definitely does not want you to believe, that Texas, Saudi Arabia, and even Ethiopia, have become breakout leaders in the renewable energy boom.

Texas’s green growth reminds me of that unforgettable admonition from Richard Nixon’s Attorney General, the late John Mitchell: “Watch what we do, not what we say.”

‘Watch What We Do’

To heed Mitchell’s sage advice, and see what businesses are actually doing, see our report, “Meeting the Power Crunch,” in which former Biden energizer bunny Jigar Shah and Jonah Wagner note that new US. .solar and storage nearly doubled in 2024—and accounted for 81% of new electricity generating capacity.

“The world is short on power―and time,” write Shah and Wagner, former leaders in the US DOE Loan Programs Office. “Governments now face a… race for secure, home-grown energy [and] renewables paired with batteries have recently become the fastest and least disruptive solution.”

Standing with Shah before his Climate Week birthday party at a Penn Station dive bar, I met Jeff Bladen. Last year, he left the relative safety of his job as Meta’s Global Director of Energy to become Head of Energy for Verrus Data, launched in 2024 to build “the next generation of data centres,” as he put it, “from the ground up.”

Verrus is backed by Alphabet. Still, what does it say when the global director of energy for one of the Magnificent Seven, or Great 8, or TenAI of Gen AI, quits for what Bladen called “a start-up”?

“Watch what we do,” Mitchell said. And why, of course.

For a glimpse at that why, see our report from Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov, who lays out “one of the clearest explanations of what’s happening to Earth’s climate right now.”

Now, speaking of Earth, can we please take a moment to remember the extraordinary life and work of Jane Goodall.

Anyone who experienced Goodall’s breath-taking studies of primates can share a personal story on her impact. 

Here’s a quick story from me: 

My father taught a high school class called Man, Woman, God, Nature and Myth that included works from the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, Joseph Campbell, Rachel Carson, and Jane Goodall.

After reading aloud passages in which Goodall described how the apes she loved—Flo, Fifi, Greybeard and others—cared for, fought and taught each other, used tools, and expressed ideas and emotions, Dad would famously leap atop his steel teachers desk and imitate the crouch, gestures and sounds of the apes we’d watched in Goodall’s films—and then challenge us to identify what actually distinguishes us from apes?

He always drew laughs, but also evoked deeper thoughts about what it means to be human, and what’s our place in Nature.

Goodall’s profound revelations about apes—and humanity—seem especially worth keeping in mind today.

Cover photo:  (ClimateGroup/flickr)