A Planet on the Brink - Why the World Must Act Now
The evidence is no longer a matter of scientific debate. It is a matter of organisational response.
2024 was the hottest year in at least 125,000 years. Global CO2 emissions exceeded 40 gigatons. Fossil fuels still account for 80% of the world's energy mix despite extraordinary growth in renewables. Greenland's ice mass, coral reef systems and global biodiversity are approaching tipping points — thresholds beyond which change becomes self-reinforcing and very hard to reverse.
Scientists now project the 1.5 degree threshold will be crossed within five years if current trends continue. These figures come not from campaign groups but from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the IPCC and peer-reviewed climate research.
The Economic Reality
Climate-linked disasters have caused over $27 trillion in global economic damage since 2000. Insurance premiums in exposed regions are rising sharply. Infrastructure built to last 50 years is failing in 20. Supply chains, food systems and energy networks in developed economies are increasingly exposed to weather-related disruption.
For anyone running a business or sitting on a board, these are not abstract concerns. They are material risks that belong on the agenda.
The Case for Confidence — and Its Limits
There is genuine reason for optimism. Renewable energy is now the cheapest electricity source in most of the world. Wind and solar overtook coal as the largest global electricity source for the first time in 2025. Research suggests that tipping points operate in societies as well as climate systems — movements representing as little as 3.5% of a population have historically been sufficient to drive significant political and economic change.
The problem is not a shortage of solutions. The technologies exist across energy, construction, agriculture and food. What is consistently missing is the pace of deployment — and behind that, the governance, the capital allocation decisions, and the organisational capacity to move from pilot to scale.
That is a leadership and board-level challenge as much as a technical one. It is where I spend most of my time.
What This Series Covers
The three blogs that follow this one look at construction, energy and food — three sectors I work in directly, each a significant contributor to the problem and each capable of being part of the solution.
In each case, although I am keen on hearing about the technology, I’m most interested in what serious change actually requires from the organisations involved: the board decisions, the governance frameworks, the commercial thinking and the leadership under pressure that determines whether good intentions translate into anything real.
If you work in any of these sectors, or advise businesses that do, I hope the series is worth your time.