In any other week, it would doubtless have had more of the media spotlight.
The news that the world’s climate has now warmed by an average of 1.49 degrees Centigrade - just a shade less than the 1.5 degrees limit of the 2015 Paris Agreement - above pre-industrial levels made relatively few headlines.
This Sky News piece, while getting its maths wrong, outlines correlations between the extent of warming and recent prolonged spells of extremely wet weather across most of Europe, and how being on the brink of breaching the target set in Paris meant cities and areas exposed to climate change impacts were simply having to adapt.
Yet the main story of the week was, of course, the ongoing US-Israeli military action against Iran and its retaliation, given the impact on surging oil prices.
As the Economist pointed out in a leader piece, if President Donald Trump has a strategic plan for reversing the spike in the price of a barrel of oil, “it would need to be very cunning.”
With consumers concerned about rising costs of petrol and diesel, not to mention home heating oil, the focus has largely been off the issue of how reliant the UK is on what is shipped from Middle East nations through the Strait of Hormuz.
Yet as The Guardian pointed out in covering analysis by the Government’s Climate Change Committee, “achieving the UK’s net zero target by 2050 will cost less than a single oil shock, and bring health and economic benefits while insulating the country against future costs.”
The piece details why reaching the ambitious - and politically contentious - net zero goal would cost Britain around £100 billion over the next 25 years, which was roughly equivalent to the energy-related costs of the fossil fuel shocks that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Financial Times quoted the Government’s main adviser as saying that hitting net zero would actually cost less.
Naturally, the Daily Telegraph disagreed in its opinion piece on the story, further gently demonising Energy Secretary Ed Miliband while trying to poke holes in the economic argument.
Politicians and media will always dispute each other’s figures, particularly where they embrace many unknowns, lengthy periods and wholesale lifestyle changes for voters. But most large UK companies continue to invest in reducing their emissions as they work towards decarbonisation goals, as the Confederation of British Industry has pointed out.
Smaller firms may struggle both with policy support and with sustaining such efforts in the face of volatile costs, but for many businesses the direction of travel is pretty firmly established, even if the way they communicate that externally may have been dialled down amidst greater political and public sensitivity.
The 1.49 degrees reality may do more to force their hand though, as concerns continue to increase over climate change impact, the associated costs of that change alongside the drive to reduce emissions, and the adaptation plans that many companies will have to develop.
