The favourite excuse from governments and businesses for not doing more to combat climate change is that China isn’t doing enough. As China is the world’s largest carbon emitter, commentators in the west have argued that without China on board, doing nothing was a reasonable option.
But following the announcement by president XI Jinping that China will become carbon neutral by 2060, the game has changed. Any bank without a well thought-out strategy for managing climate risk is living in cloud cuckoo land and will eventually see its profits fall.
