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W elcome back to Current Climate . Not every prediction in An Inconvenient Truth , Al Gore’s 2006 call to action on climate change, came to pass (e.g., Mount Kilimanjaro still has a little snow and ice left), but he nailed the big picture. Twenty years on, each year is hotter than the one that preceded it; ocean temperatures are rising; and extreme storms and weather events that used to happen only every few centuries are annual occurrences.

The failure of much of the developed world, particularly the U.S. and China, to move faster to rein in planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions would seem maddening to the former U.S. Vice President, but Gore is surprisingly upbeat about the potential to get things on a better path – even as the current administration continues to label climate change a hoax . In fact, he told Forbes that the world may be at a positive tipping point.

“For the first time this year, the total amount of new energy produced by renewables exceeds the increase in the overall energy use in the growing global economy. … For the first time, both the U.S. and China are getting more electricity from solar than from coal,” he said. “Twenty years ago, the vast majority of global investment in energy was in fossil and the minority in renewables. Now it's 65% in renewables and 35% in fossil.”

“China has signaled now that it wants to be measured not on the reduction in the intensity of their carbon emissions, but actual emissions,” Gore said. “They've signaled they want to begin providing diplomatic leadership in the world and they've signaled they want to host COP33, the conference of all the nations on climate that will take place two years and two months from now. And China has installed so much renewable energy, it's mind-blowing.”

China’s solar boom is especially noteworthy. “In July of last year, every single day of that month, they installed 3 gigawatts of solar. That's three giant-sized nuclear reactors opening every single day for an entire month, but in the form of solar panels,” he said.

“We're seeing now the president of Korea commenting immediately after the war in Iran began saying, 'This is it. We've got to accelerate this transition.’ The prime minister of Nepal, for understandable reasons after that horrible tragedy there, said the world has to move faster. Thailand just announced a big shift from liquefied natural gas to solar. In Africa, they're installing 100,000 solar panels per day, most of them outside of the statistics being collected by governments. In parts of Pakistan, a common bride's dowry is three panels and an inverter now. So we're gaining momentum,” Gore said.

Nevertheless, “the crisis is still getting worse faster than we're deploying the solutions,” he said. “But we're now getting to the point where we can start the positive side of this journey. I’m very hopeful. … We have urgency, but we also have agency, the ability to do something about it. I remain optimistic.”

Can Celebrity Star Power Bring More Money To Nature?

Can a celebrity-studded gala help steer serious investment toward nature? That’s the bet behind THE NAT, which held its second annual gala during New York Climate Week last week, bringing together conservationists, investors and names including Michelle Pfeiffer and Sabrina Elba.

This year’s “Water Is Life”-themed event also featured investor Tenzin Seldon and marine biologist and oceanographer Sylvia Earle. Founder Gail Gallie says the fashion, music and celebrity draw are intended as a means to a much bigger end.

“The gala itself is obviously a big cultural moment. It’s meant to be attention-seeking, it’s meant to be celeb-laden,” Gallie told Forbes ahead of the event. But, “THE NAT’s not a party production vehicle.”

The nonprofit’s broader proposition is that it can use the attention generated by the gala to bring investors and conservationists together to direct more capital toward nature. Throughout the year, Gallie says its three-person full-time team convenes gatherings around areas including regenerative agriculture, freshwater and oceans. So far, the easiest financial impact to quantify is philanthropic. THE NAT had aimed to raise $20 million at its first gala, with seats priced at $25,000, but ultimately hauled in $2 million.

According to Sebastian Troëng, CEO of Conservation International, that money helped support it and Mastercard’s Priceless Planet Coalition in restoration work equivalent to one million trees across a portfolio of 22 projects. This year’s NAT Gala is again supporting Conservation International, along with Blue Marine Foundation and Open Planet.

Gallie argues philanthropy alone won’t provide the scale of funding needed for conservation, which is why The NAT’s broader focus is investment capital. The harder part is measuring whether its attention and convenings are translating into the much larger pools of capital Gallie wants to influence. THE NAT has said its work has helped mobilize hundreds of millions of dollars, but Gallie acknowledged that the organization doesn’t currently have a way to quantify how much investment has resulted directly from its efforts. Gallie also couldn’t yet point to a specific investment resulting from a NAT connection.

She said relationships cultivated through THE NAT are beginning to coalesce into potentially sizable investments in regenerative agriculture. Attribution is difficult, Gallie argues, because THE NAT often makes introductions and nurtures relationships rather than investing itself. “Sometimes it’s messy, sometimes it’s kind of a bit bendy. It’s not a straight line,” she said.

Gallie said she hopes that within five years THE NAT will have helped deploy $5 billion into nature restoration. And for now, the gala remains its most visible tool for attracting funds.

“It’s an attention economy, and nature does not win,” she said. “I’m basically trying to do a vibe shift in nature investing.”

Amazon CSO Kara Hurst On Scaling Sustainability At A Multi-Trillion-Dollar Business

Amazon is more carbon-efficient, but last year's overall carbon emissions were up. How do you get that number consistently moving down even as the business grows?

I am so proud of the progress the company has made and our teams have made. It is a real challenge at our scale to do this work. But if you look at our carbon intensity—and this is why goals matter—we set out to be net-zero carbon across our global operations, and we're aiming to do that by 2040. That is an incredible challenge across our scale, to your point.

But when you set an intention like that, what it does is kind of get everybody rowing in the same direction. That means we are making decisions. Some of them we'll make immediately. We are, you know, looking to purchase as much carbon-free energy as possible, looking to electrify our fleet. So, when we put that decision into action—I mean, quite frankly, well before 2019 because we were already purchasing energy, we were already doing things—but when we put that actual goal out, probably in 2019, that did send a signal throughout the business. Now people know every decision that we make is going to be carbon-aware.

We also knew it wasn't going to be an absolute linear path. I think this is one of the things that people want to see: that every single year that number is going down. But if you think about how businesses make decisions, sometimes it's smarter to make a decision in 2032 than it will be to make it in 2028. So not every decision that we make is going to be in-year. Some decisions we make this year are going to have ramifications for—they won't pan out till 2031. And some decisions that we made a couple years ago will actually start reaping benefits this year.

The renewable energy that we're purchasing might come online in a future year, or we might decide to purchase fleet in a certain year because it's a better financial decision for the company, whatever. I think what's interesting is we are marching in this direction extremely consistently and have never veered from that path. That's really important for a company of our size. It's also why a high-growth company should measure carbon intensity, because as we grow, we want to say, "Are we growing in a more carbon-efficient way? Are we growing in a less carbon-intense way?"

AWS added more data centers last year than any other company globally. How do you support that energy system while continuing to meet Amazon's climate goals?

We're looking at all types of carbon-free energy. Again, wind, solar, nuclear, and we'll continue to look at what we can do for battery storage, for other carbon sequestration. We're open to looking at all kinds of technologies, and I think investing in things like X-energy, small modular [nuclear], have been really exciting as well.

Both the PPAs that we're doing, which are utility-scale energy, we also use our rooftops in our fulfillment network to put on-site solar. We're kind of invested in everything. And we have been one of the largest corporate purchasers of renewable energy in the world. We have a growing portfolio, and we'll continue to invest.

How do you determine when Amazon should be simply like a buyer of a solution versus use its capital and scale to either accelerate a market or even create a new one?

One of the things that we've talked about a lot is some of these technologies are not at cost parity. It's one of the reasons why, when we took these goals, we also created our own goal to be net-zero carbon as a pledge. … We have one of the biggest value chains in the world. We work with a lot of different suppliers. But we can't move the steel industry, the cement industry, the built environment, the aviation industry, the maritime industry. We are a big player, but not only can we not move those industries on our own, we don't know everything. We don't come with all of the solutions or all of the lessons. We have a lot to learn; we want to remain humble in that. There are great solutions out there and great people inventing new things all the time. We want to remain open to those solutions, and also want to understand from people what's not working … so that we can learn from that really quickly and move on.

CATL is designing batteries for American pickups despite U.S.-China trade barriers ( Financial Times )

Low-carbon bank financing tops $1 trillion , nearing parity with fossil fuels ( BloombergNEF )

Federal judge rules against Trump administration over canceled Solar For All grants ( Inside Climate News )

‘Planetary boundaries’ necessary for flourishing of life have been massively breached, scientists warn ( The Guardian )