Unsurprisingly, COP26 president Rt. Hon Alok Sharma MP did not have much time for television in 2021. Yet, amidst the lull of the Christmas festivities, he too was able to join the billions of viewers who tuned into Netflix’s record-breaking film Don’t Look Up. Adam McKay’s climate change allegory sees a pair of scientists (Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) catapulted into an impromptu media tour, as they try to warn the people of Earth that a comet is on course to obliterate the planet in less than six months. 

In his speech at Chatham House reflecting on COP26, Alok Sharma recalled the closing scenes of the film. As walls shake and flames engulf the landscape, DiCaprio’s character Dr. Randall Mindy tells his family who are gathered around him, braced for impact: “The thing of it is we really did have everything, didn’t we, in the end?”, echoing the fact that – as the COP26 President said – limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees is still a possibility, albeit a remote one now. 

The harrowing images of planetary destruction at the end of Don’t Look Up Now remain largely confined to cinematic representations and worst-case climate modelling scenarios, but the sense of urgency felt so acutely by McKay’s central protagonists was clearly visible in Alok Sharma’s speech. At the heart of it was a clear message shared by all of us at GEFI: now is the time to transform the commitments gained at COP26 Glasgow into tangible action and to deliver on the promises set out on the banks of the Clyde just over 12 weeks ago. Doing so, as Rt. Hon Alok Sharma reminded us, is our “last best chance” to mitigate irreversible climate change and avoid what Barbados Prime Minister Mia Motley movingly labelled the “death sentence of 2 degrees” if we fail to keep the 1.5-degree target set by the Paris Agreement alive. 

Although the pleas for action underpinning Don’t Look Up are ultimately thwarted by political inertia, Sharma was key to emphasise both the wins achieved at COP26 and the broader reasons for hope. Central to the success of the Glasgow climate pact, he argued, was a sense of collective self-interest. Alongside this shared sense of global urgency to prevent the worst of irreversible damage to people and planet, Sharma was keen to stress that the commitments of the Climate Pact were also born out of the “economic case for climate adaptation and mitigation” shared by all leaders over the course of negotiations. Investing in warning systems and defences, for instance, could yield over 4 times the amount paid in damages, whilst failure to do so will restrain global economy’s ability to grow (the equivalent cost of wiping out 20% of GDP every year). 

At GEFI, we echo Rt. Hon Sharma’s sentiment that finance (and mobilisation of the finance sector) is key to ensuring that the economic gains of a sustainable transition are not lost or left as merely promising words on paper. Alongside what Rt. Hon Sharma cited as a “need to turn our focus to loss and adaptation finance to develop the dialogue started in Glasgow”, his speech also highlighted a further three steps that the finance sector must deliver on, as global attention turns to COP27 and COP28:

  1. Show we’re on track to deliver £100 bn goal 
  2. Encourage firms to deliver with integrity to unleash public and private finance 
  3. Work hand in hand with COP27 Egypt and COP28 UAE to learn from success of Glasgow whilst also engaging with civil societies and young people 

Over the course of our Path to COP26 campaign, we have echoed Rt. Hon Sharma’s call to bring together stakeholders across finance and beyond to raise ambition and drive climate action. Through our Strategic Campaigns, Research & Advisory, Capacity Building, and Practical Solutions we will continue to inspire change and mobilise the finance sector throughout 2022 to deliver the promises of COP26 Glasgow. 

A failure to do so brings us dangerously close to the dramatic scenes of Don’t Look Up. We will have, to quote Alok Sharma, “mitigated no risks. Seized no opportunities. We will have fractured the trust built between nations, and the 1.5-degree target set out in the terms of the Paris Agreement will slip from our grasp.” 

As Sharma ultimately reminded us, “1.5 is still alive but its pulse weak.” If we do not want to look back on a life of abundance that we allowed to willfully slip through our fingers, then the finance sector must be the ones to step up and deliver on the solutions needed to save it. 

Ellen Davis-Walker
Digital Content Executive