“I’d want to be invested in electric buses right now, in the technologies that are going to make zero carbon buildings happen”, says Mark Watts, who leads the most influential group of city mayors driving climate action around the world. We catch up with the C40 Executive Director during a visit to his favorite city, Copenhagen. He reveals the latest urban market trends, a little known climate threat and the green secret of the Danish capital.
Mark Watts is sounding the alarm about a looming climate threat that few people are aware of. After a three year downward trend, fossil fuel emissions rose an estimated 2% in 2017, and continue to grow. “There’s so much positivity about the shift to a low carbon world, lots of people think we’re winning – that the emissions are going down. Sadly they’re not!” the C40 chief points out. Rising emissions are upending the Paris climate targets that his city network is fighting to meet. So, world mayors are leveraging the market to reverse this trend by borrowing a page from Copenhagen’s playbook. They are writing new rules to create business opportunities in the C40 network, that consists of over 90 cities representing 650 million people and a quarter of the global economy.
Listen to the whole interview here: