As the world’s largest economy and the number-one historical emitter, the United States carries enormous influence as to whether climate challenges can be successfully addressed. Climate change continues to ravage all corners of the U.S., resulting in massive economic, public health and environmental damages and public and political support for bold action has increased markedly in recent years. Ambitious climate policies must be developed and implemented on all levels of government to avoid the worst climate impacts.
The Ambition Loop paper, produced by We Mean Business, UN Global Compact, and World Resources Institute, illustrates where business leadership and strong policy measures have spurred additional investment and action by businesses, accelerating the transition to a prosperous zero carbon economy. It includes powerful examples of how public and private sector goals have aligned to create ambition loops.
Eutrophication — the over-enrichment of freshwater and coastal ecosystems with nutrients from agriculture, wastewater and urban areas — is a rapidly growing environmental crisis and one of the biggest threats to water quality. WRI has estimated that there are hundreds of coastal areas suffering from excess nutrients and hypoxia, or “dead zones.”
Increasingly, companies are entering territories traditionally managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities to meet the rising demand for land-based resources. This is leading to increased violence and intimidation against these local communities. Many environmental defenders within these communities are among the planet’s greatest stewards, caring for lands and natural resources that sustain up to 2.5 billion people. Growing violence against and criminalization of these defenders indicates bad governance and poses huge environmental risks to the lands they are protecting.
Over the last decade, many large-scale energy buyers started setting clean energy goals, indicating a positive change toward clean energy within electricity systems. However, many didn’t have the knowledge or resources to achieve these goals, largely because buyers lacked opportunities to interact with and learn from each other. Since buyers hold a large amount of energy in the United States — over half of all energy consumption comes from the commercial and industrial sector — the connections and relationships between buyers can greatly influence the market.
Green tariffs are a renewable energy solution in regulated electricity markets that allows customers to more easily access clean power. A green tariff is a price structure, or an electricity rate, offered by a local utility and approved by the state's Public Utility Commission that allows eligible customers to source up to 100% of their electricity from renewable resources. Through a green tariff, customers can purchase both the energy from a renewable energy project, at a large-scale, and the associated Renewable Energy Certificates, which can help them advance their overall clean energy goals and contribute to emissions reductions.
Over three billion people around the world suffer from the consequences of land degradation: less water, lower crop yields, declining rural incomes and erosion. Governments have committed to restore millions of hectares of farms, forests and pasture through the global Bonn Challenge and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Their objective is to bring prosperity to struggling rural economies and kickstart a vibrant “restoration economy” of thriving businesses and community groups.
Over one billion tons of the world’s food is lost or wasted every year. The enormous social, economic and environmental effects of this waste prompted the UN Sustainable Development Goal’s call to halve the world’s food loss and waste by 2030. To achieve this goal, governments and companies first need help identifying food loss and waste hotspots and where to concentrate their efforts.
Food production is a significant contributor to climate change, accounting for nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Some foods generate more greenhouse gas than others: food from animals make up two-thirds of all agricultural GHG emissions and use more than three-quarters of agricultural land. Plant-based foods generally have a much lower environmental impact.
