OECD Green Talks LIVE: Moving the world economy to net zero

OECD Green Talks LIVE: Moving the world economy to net zero: the role of transition finance and planning

To meet the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement, decarbonisation measures will need to be financed across all sectors of the economy — most importantly in energy-intensive and hard-to-abate sectors in emerging markets and developing economies. As governments and the private sector ramp up their net-zero pledges, grapple with the ongoing energy crisis and face rising inflation, how to achieve those goals is increasingly put into question.

In the midst of these challenges, market actors and jurisdictions have ramped up efforts around transition finance, such as developing taxonomies and guidelines. But transition finance is often criticised for opening the door to greenwashing and risking emission-intensive lock-in. How can we ensure the development of robust corporate transition plans to support credible and meaningful transition investments towards net zero? And how can emission-intensive lock-in and greenwashing be avoided?

[OldScientist]

Getting to Net Zero by 2050 would cost $9.2 trillion a year globally (McKinsey). That's not going to be good value for money. That's nearly one-tenth of global GDP. That money would be better spent on a myriad of things including educating the fifth of humanity who are illiterate and represent a 7% annual loss to the world's economy. Any country that attempts it will be indebted or impoverished.
Example: For the UK to reach net zero by electrification of its transport fleet and heating system, it will require a tripling of its current electrical generation capacity among other things. This will essentially require the UK consuming all of the current global supply of copper and other rare metals for the next 20 years. The cost will be unaffordable and the skilled manpower levels unattainable. And that is just to eliminate the 1% of the global CO2 emissions that the UK is responsible for. So times that by 100 for the Earth. Imagine the damage done from all that resource extraction! And for what?
Maddeningly, there is no climate crisis. The Earth was warmer in the recent and distant past.