IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN

There have been calls for a reset on climate change strategies. But what does that look like?

- JEFF YOUNG

IT STARTED IN APRIL, JUST AFTER EARTH DAY, WHEN former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his think tank, the Tony Blair Institute, called for a "radical reset" in the way the world tackles climate change.

Blair argued that current net-zero strategies were "doomed to fail."

Next came Bill Gates, among the world's richest men and a major force in clean tech through his Breakthrough Energy investment group. Gates released a memo just before the COP30 climate talks calling for "a different view" and urging leaders to "adjust our strategies" for dealing with climate change.

"Climate change is not the biggest threat to the lives and livelihoods of people in poor countries, and it won't be in the future," Gates wrote, infuriating many in the climate movement. University of Pennsylvania climate scientist and author Michael Mann told Newsweek the Gates memo was "horrifying."

President Donald Trump, who has called climate change the world's "greatest con job," seized on the Gates memo. "I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax," Trump posted on social media, and claimed that Gates had "finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue." (Gates denied this admittance, calling Trump's comments a “gigantic misreading” of his memo.)

Along the way, several major banks and businesses have quietly edged away from earlier climate pledges and dropped out of net-zero groups as they reassess their approach amid Trump’s hostility to climate action and diminished enthusiasm for it in some other parts of the world.

The call for a climate “reset” is upon us. But just what does that mean and what would a climate reset look like? We asked some leading climate thinkers from business, economics, energy and politics to weigh in.

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