Huge change in thinking and leadership is needed for our planet to get anywhere close to achieving Net Zero as rapidly as required. Are leaders getting the message and taking action at last?

Yes. Here Paul Polman describes how at last the mountain of scepticism, caution and resistance is shifting noticeably in the direction needed.

Johan Rockström has been speaking with Nik Gowing in Nature’s Newsroom at COP-26 in Glasgow on 6th November, the halfway point of COP-26. He says that “the direction of travel is not debated anymore” at COP 26. “It’s rather the pace of change” that is the question being discussed. He hopes that urgent message from science are at the forefront of leaders’ thinking at COP as a “constructive stress factor”.

This ground breaking research must revolutionise leadership. It is already doing so after four years study by the Future of the Corporation project for the British Academy. The outcome “exceeded anything we expected”. That is why we at TTU are publishing it. The work involved “hundreds of academics, leading thinkers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, lawyers, policymakers, regulators, and people from every walk of life around the world”.

Tariq Fancy said he was disillusioned by what he saw as the non-impact of sustainable investing. This is despite the bold claims made for new ‘green’ products by this fast growing sector. Too much capital is going towards companies that are doing things that are not in the public interest and too much sustaina-babble is coming out of Wall Street.

The intense ‘heat dome’ and rainfall events in North America, Central Europe and China have been overwhelming. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the scale of flood damage “surreal”. President Xi Jinping labelled “extremely severe” the implications of one year’s rain falling in Henan province over three days. But no one should consider these as a shock. The events are in line with scientific warnings. Leaders must expect and plan for even greater extremes.