Timing is everything…

Thoughts on New York Climate Week.

Amidst all the meetings, the panels, the photo ops, the speeches, the drinks, the subways downtown, the Ubers back up, the dinners, the reunions and the frantic posting on LinkedIn, New York Climate Week seems to have gone off just like any other New York Climate Week…

Two incidents stand out, both interesting for the question of ‘timing’.

Rishi’s announcement about UK rowing back on Net Zero. 

With almost distasteful choreography, the UK government chose to make the announcement in London to coincide precisely with the opening speeches at the UN General Assembly in New York and Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ Climate Ambition Summit on Wednesday. “Disappointing” said some. “Insulting” said others. “Cynical” say we. But if you want to make a splash, you need to upset a few people - so perhaps the timing was “admirable”? - to deliberately rattle the bucket in the hunt for swing voters of the anti-woke, climate-denying flavour at the upcoming by-elections, and blot out the progressive news coming out from other countries in New York?

New York floods in ‘unprecedented’ extreme weather incident. 

Flash flooding swept over parts of the New York City, residents reeled from powerful downpours and surging waters picked up cars and grabbed the headlines around the world. What a vivid, timely and frightening backdrop to any Climate Week? Except the rains arrived 5 days late - 5 days after Climate Week closed. We can only speculate - what impact might they have had 5 days earlier? This has been the ‘summer of visible climate impact’, but to witness NY Climate Week be washed out could well have been an important psychological and meaningful moment for world-leaders and back-sliders….

And with that, the jamboree rolls on to COP in Dubai…. when surely ‘action’ will be on the agenda. See you in November.