At Glasgow Climate Summit, Little Asked Of Elite, Few Solutions Offered

By Tim Redmond, 48hills

Of all people, Prince Charles helped lead off the Glasgow climate summit with a warning that the planet needs to move to a “warlike footing” to save the planet—and then he, and most of the other heads of state who spoke, made clear exactly why this is going to be such a difficult process.

The Prince of Wales said that the “private sector” was ready to help, if we can “build the confidence of investors” to pour “trillions, not billions” into climate-friendly technologies. He compared the climate crisis to Covid, and talked about how “the private sector can speed up technologies.”

For the record: The research that led to the Covid vaccines was largely funded by governments, not private investors.

Then President Joe Biden said that “we will do what’s necessary” and that this is “an opportunity for all of us, and inflection point in world history.”

He talked about raising the standard of living all over the globe, to fuel “greater growth, new jobs.”

But as The New York Times noted, there were not a lot of clear proposals about how to proceed from here.