The private sector isn’t so sure. JP Morgan Chase—the bank that’s financed more fossil fuel development than any of its competitors since the Paris Agreement was signed—concluded that moving from hydrocarbons to renewables just isn’t a good enough deal. In a strategy report sent out to clients this week, the bank said that those pushing for more ambitious climate targets were in need of a “reality check”: Renewable energy, the report noted, “currently offers subpar returns.” The energy consultancy Wood McKenzie similarly found that higher interest rates are making wind, solar, and other low-carbon energies look “even harder and more costly” to those who might fund them.
In other words, despite the staggering figure published in Nature, today’s titans of industry are gambling that they’ll be sufficiently insulated from the economic chaos wrought by rising temperatures, and that they therefore don’t need to worry about how they’re contributing to that phenomenon or the consequences for their bottom lines. They’re companies, though: The only thing we can reasonably expect them to do is to try to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible. The trouble is people who should know better assuming they’ll do anything else.
