Introduction

• LinkedIn is a great way to track new climate reports, papers, news stories, and web sites, and a lot of posts on LinkedIn flag such resources. We’ll only include such posts in the Newsletter if they have enough content to stand on their own, but a lot of that great content can be accessed in yourclimatetoolbox.com. For example, go here for new reports and papers, and go here for news stories and web resources.  Remember that yourclimatetoolbox.com also contains the LinkedIn Knowledgebase where you can access more than 1,000 curated and organized posts.
• For an audio version of “This Week on LinkedIn” check out the new Climate Roulette Podcast! It should be available on your podcast platform.  Many of its bite-sized (5-30 minute) daily episodes will reflect topics covered on LinkedIn, allowing you to quickly dig deeper into key reports and topics!  The “This Week on LinkedIn” episodes will cover the same posts as the Newsletter, but in more detail for people wanting to use the podcast as an alternative to clicking through the links here in the Newsletter.

 Now, on with Issue #16!

Mark Trexler and Zsolt Lengyel

 Witnessing Climate Reality & The Call for Accountability

 The week brought tangible evidence of climate change's accelerating effects and raised crucial questions about who should bear the costs.  Sasha Cisar - Deeply shaken by glacier collapse. A massive avalanche of the Birch glacier in Switzerland buried 90% of the village of Blatten, with experts linking accelerated movement and destabilized rock to global warming.  John Moorhead asks: Who should pay for the damages associated with that glacier collapse?.  

Climate Science Translated shared a new video featuring David Cross and Michael Oppenheimer using humor to communicate the severity of the climate crisis. The video highlights that without rapid changes, temperatures are headed towards devastating levels.  

Darius Nassiry shared a new study proposing a framework to assign probabilities to climate scenarios, revealing a significant 35-40% chance of exceeding 3°C warming by 2100. Tim Bleeker argues that a German court has opened the door to corporate climate liability, recognizing that major greenhouse gas emitters can, in principle, be held liable under civil law for contributing to climate-related harms.  

Navigating Corporate & Financial System Hurdles

Ken Pucker - Backsliding on Sustainability?  questions if companies are retreating from sustainability efforts, noting conflicting signals like increased science-based targets alongside withdrawals from climate initiatives and missed emissions goals by major companies. He worries that optimistic reports may mask a more challenging reality, questioning whether the focus on reporting and targets over the last decade has truly translated into meaningful sustainability progress.  Nawar Alsaadi reports on “Multiple Personality Disorders,” based on an EY survey highlighting a significant disconnect between boards and C-suites, where 82% of board members see sustainability strategies as distinct from business strategies, compared to only 26% of senior executives.

Alex Edmans discusses a revised paper arguing that the primary driver for incorporating Environmental and Social (ES) factors in investing is financial returns, with few investors willing to sacrifice returns for ES performance due to fiduciary duty. The paper concludes that asset managers are unlikely to lead the transformation of companies' ES performance, and that this role is better suited for governments and impact investors.

Harald Walkate shares insights from Sir Dieter Helm, who notes that global energy is still predominantly fossil-based and renewables have only met the increase in demand, meaning a true "transition" has not yet occurred. Addressing climate change requires acknowledging real costs, trade-offs, and strong government action, as there are few "win-wins".

Yulia Titova highlights a concerning trend where public money often shoulders the risk in climate finance projects, while private investors reap a disproportionate share of the profits. This "power imbalance" is not building resilience but rather socializing risk and privatizing reward.

Andrew Watson argues that current financial statements haven't reflected the reality of transition-related commitments and risks since the Paris Agreement, creating "upside down accounting incentives" that run counter to climate goals.  Ana Luci Grizzi highlights new guidance from the TNFD emphasizing nature as a material driver of business value and longevity. Boards are urged to incorporate nature risks and opportunities into governance, strategy, and risk management, moving beyond a climate-centric view to protect value and ensure continuity.  Alexander Nevolin discusses the separation between traditional financial volatility models and long-term climate models used in stress testing frameworks, arguing that all relevant information, including future-facing climate risk indicators, needs to be accounted for, especially as short-term climate scenarios increasingly overlap with existing financial modeling.

Data, Measurement, and Reporting

Underpinning corporate and financial action is the fundamental need for robust data and measurement. Several posts addressed the challenges and advancements in this area. Michael Gillenwater proposes a “multi-statement approach to fix the "structural problems" and "comparability illusion" in current GHG Protocol Scope 3 accounting. The proposed approach would include a Physical GHG Inventory with clear, industry-specific boundaries for comparability and a Mitigation Intervention statement for avoided emissions and removals outside the inventory.

Daniele Horton highlights the rapid global emergence of over 2,000 sustainability regulations, fundamentally shifting how value and risk are defined , embedding climate, nature, and transition risks into financial decision-making, building the foundation for sustainability data to be integrated into the global financial system, not remain a parallel system.

Rafaela Gonçalves de Almeida shares a new AI tool called Parakeet that combines language and embedding models to automate and optimize emission factor selection for Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), promising faster, more scalable LCAs with improved accuracy by understanding messy data and providing explanations for recommendations.

Peter Howard recommends we check out Climate TRACE, a new database that offers free, asset-level emissions data with ownership information, enabling powerful analysis by linking it to company financials and physical climate data.

Debates on Specific Solutions

Sophus zu Ermgassen summarizes the arguments for and against nature-based offsets, noting proponents see them as the best tool for mobilizing private capital (around $12 billion annually globally), while opponents argue they don't work and enable "predatory delay" of real emissions cuts. He concludes that at a macro-scale offsets represent structural greenwashing, while offsets at a micro-level are funding many well-intentioned projects. He also expresses sadness over the UK government's focus on scaling voluntary markets for nature finance, arguing his research shows little real-world demand and that these markets have historically played a minimal role. Voluntary markets are low-cost and a useful mechanism for delaying real regulation for businesses that damage nature, suggesting that mandatory mechanisms or credible demand drivers are needed to trigger significant private finance flows.

Lambert Schneider suggests that the revised EU Carbon Removal Certification Methodologies lack integrity, and could lead to significant over-crediting. He fears this lack of quality, failing to learn from past carbon market issues, could undermine confidence in the new EU units, similar to problems encountered in voluntary carbon markets.

Philippe Birker shares some of the reasons for Climate Farmers’ recent withdrawal from the carbon offset market, including underestimating its complexity, trying to do too many things simultaneously (carbon program, community, movement, academy), and misreading the maturity and shifting rules of the carbon market space. Despite the challenges, he remains hopeful about outcome-based finance in regenerative agriculture if it's rooted in farmer reality and supported by strong operational structures.

Nadia Soraya Kock defends Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology against critics, arguing it is a necessary multi-layered, scalable tool for the climate crisis. While acknowledging valid concerns about energy use and potential misuse by fossil fuel companies, she stresses that abandoning the technology ignores the responsibility to shape how it is used and its efficiency compared to natural methods like reforestation.

The Human & Political Context

Andrew Paterson suggests that the climate movement needs more "pessimism" (realism), linking companies' stalling to the 'positivity bias' where people overestimate positive outcomes. He proposes using 'loss aversion' from psychology to reframe messaging, focusing on the financial losses and negative consequences companies face by not taking action, rather than framing it purely as gaining resilience or reputation.

Eric Orts focuses on Jamelle Bouie's analysis of contemporary threats to democracy, including a "battle against a sustainable climate future" driven by a "burn-baby-burn attitude" from certain political factions and figures. This perspective views climate change as a conflict where elites prioritize consolidating power for themselves ("us") against others ("them"), who are seen as disposable or to be kept down, highlighting the political barriers to climate action.

Thanks for reading!

Mark Trexler and Zsolt Lengyel