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The Net-Zero Banking Alliance was launched to great fanfare in 2021, with headlines at the time touting the boldness of dozens of financial institutions pledging to align with climate goals. For a moment, it seemed as though the industry had embraced a new kind of responsibility: steering the economy away from climate disaster.
Fast-forward to the present, and the picture looks very different. The alliance recently suspended its activities after several of its biggest members withdrew, sparking accusations that political pressure had killed off the experiment. Yet as professors David L. Levy and Rami Kaplan argue, the story is more complex. Politics may have hastened the collapse, but the alliance was shaky from the start.
Drawing on more than 80 interviews with banking executives, activists and energy industry leaders, Levy and Kaplan show how risk assessment, peer dynamics and a booming sustainability consulting industry propelled the alliance forward – and why the economics of fossil fuels helped pull it apart.
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David L Levy, UMass Boston; Rami Kaplan, Tel Aviv University
The Net-Zero Banking Alliance, intended to curb lending to carbon-intensive sectors, wasn’t effective and more importantly never made much business sense.
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Quote of the week 💬
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“The bottom line is that telling a great joke rarely gets you a promotion. And cracking a bad one can jeopardize your job – even if you’re not a talk show host who earns a living making people laugh.”
– Marketing experts Peter McGraw, Adam Barsky and Caleb Warren in their article Why you seriously need to stop trying to be funny at work
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Economy
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Danny Bradlow, University of Pretoria; Ana Saggioro Garcia, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFFRJ); Kennedy Mbeva, University of Cambridge; Sandy Africa, University of Pretoria
Multilateralism is under severe strain. Does the G20 still have a role in this changing landscape?
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Arturo Porzecanski, American University
A sharp sell-off of the peso has seen President Javier Milei seek a financial lifeline from the United States. Washington seems happy to help out.
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Business
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Michael Nalick, University of Denver
New research finds that misconduct in private lives often does more damage to leaders’ careers and companies than cooking the books.
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Technology
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Michael Legg, UNSW Sydney
Researchers found more than 80 cases of generative AI use in Australian courts so far – mostly by people representing themselves. That comes with serious risks.
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Economics
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David Ikenberry, University of Colorado Boulder
The pace of US business investment has fallen by about 50% over the past 50 years. Idle capacity, not cautious executives, explains the decline, research suggests.
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