Essay by Eric Worrall
“… To succeed in a fast-changing world, we must enhance the force-multipliers. …”
UN Climate Chief at NY Climate Week: Defining the New Era of Climate Action; Getting Behind Paris and Stepping it up at COP30 and Beyond
22 September 2025
Below are remarks delivered by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell at New York Climate Week on 22 September 2025, during a flagship event hosted by Mission 2025, focused on the rise of the new economy, and launching the new Inside COP30 podcast series, by Outrage & Optimism.
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This new era of climate action must be about bringing our process closer to the real economy: accelerating implementation and spreading the colossal benefits of climate action to billions more people.
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To succeed in a fast-changing world, we must enhance the force-multipliers.
Take industrial transformation: the clean industry underpins stronger economies, more resilient supply chains, lower costs and lower emissions.
Yet 1.6 trillion dollars worth of projects remain idle.
That is wasted potential.
In the next five years we can unleash huge progress – powered by innovators and entrepreneurs, enabled by Paris-aligned governments, creating millions of good jobs.
That is why I fully support Build Clean Now – a global initiative to fast-track clean industry shifts, led by the Industrial Transition Accelerator, being launched later this afternoon.
The same principle applies to AI.
AI is not a ready-made solution, and it carries risks. But it can also be a game-changer. So we now need to blunt its dangerous edges, sharpen its catalytic ones, and put it astutely to work.
I echo the Secretary-General: if you run a major AI platform, power it with renewables, and innovate to drive energy efficiency.
Jobs and livelihoods must be protected. Done properly, AI releases human capacity, not replaces it. That is our approach within the Secretariat, as we explore how AI can improve our own work.
Most important it is powered to drive real-world outcomes: managing microgrids, mapping climate risk, guiding resilience planning. And this is just the beginning.
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Read more: https://unfccc.int/news/un-climate-chief-at-ny-climate-week-defining-the-new-era-of-climate-action-getting-behind-paris-and
This is word salad.
“… This new era of climate action must be about bringing our process closer to the real economy …. To succeed in a fast-changing world, we must enhance the force-multipliers. …”. Yep, that explains it all.
Jobs and livelihoods will not be protected in the age of AI, any more than intensive manual jobs were protected during the industrial revolution. Many jobs will disappear forever, but others will take their place, for people who are nimble enough to keep up.
Neither will carbon emissions be restrained. In the rush to win the AI race, humanity’s carbon footprint is about to soar. Nobody will hesitate to pump more CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, while they believe the very future of their businesses and nations hinge on having more AI capacity than their rivals.
But the one thing which won’t happen is widespread adoption of renewables to power AI. Across the world tech companies are commissioning new gas or coal plants, or restarting nuclear plants, to deliver the gargantuan energy required for their new toys. There are a few “clean energy AI” projects, such as a hydro powered project which Open AI is building in Norway, but they will continue to be in the minority. There just isn’t anywhere near enough reliable zero carbon energy to power what is coming.
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