As Joe Biden prepares to rejoin the global fight against climate change, who will foot the bill?

Name: Earth Day celebrates 50th anniversary
Uploaded: 2020-12-27T19:30:07.000Z
Duration: 3 min 7 s
Description: Earth Day celebrates 50th anniversary

To garner the necessary funds to combat climate change, the US needs a financial system tsar who can push Wall Street to come up with products linked directly to long-term investment in individual UN Sustainable Development Goals

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A firefighter douses flames as they push towards homes during the Creek fire in the Cascadel Woods area of California on September 7. Climate change has contributed to the death and dryness of trees that fuel the spread of wildfires. Photo: AFP

Anthony Rowley

Published: 3:30am, 28 Dec 2020Updated: 3:42am, 28 Dec 2020

US President-elect Joe Biden has promised to go full tilt into action against climate change from the first day of his presidency on January 20. But, in fighting an impending climate crisis, he and other advanced-nation leaders may encounter an unexpected enemy – a crisis of market capitalism.

The two things are closely connected, but this fact does not appear to have dawned yet on policymakers, investors and others who are raring to go into battle against climate change and other existential threats. Saving the planet is going to cost money, and no one is sure where it will come from.

In round terms, half of the multitrillion-dollar amount needed is envisaged to come from governments and the other half from financial market investors. Just how exactly this latter half is supposed to find its way from private savings into public projects is far from clear.

This is an extraordinary situation given the reams of analysis that have accumulated on global warming and its fallout – by way of floods, droughts, hurricanes, famines and (maybe) more pandemics. It is even more extraordinary given the other massive socioeconomic challenges facing the world now.

03:07

Earth Day celebrates 50th anniversary

The United Nations has identified what needs to be done in its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – but not how and by whom. Great faith is being placed in so-called ESG (environment, social and governance) investing (another UN initiative) but this faith is very probably misplaced.

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