Hello, and welcome to Climate Week NYC 2026. I'm Helen Clarkson, CEO of Climate Group, and it's an honour to host Climate Week NYC.
I’d like to thank our returning Headline Partner Trane Technologies and our Opening Ceremony partner Siemens, for making this all possible, and the Glasshouse for hosting us once again.
And I’d like to thank YOU for being here, and the people watching this later, wherever they are in the world.
This is my tenth Opening speech, and every year I start with a list of record-breaking weather-events of the past twelve months.
It’s not really good form to repeat myself, but when we talk about extreme flooding, heatwaves, or glacier collapse, we’re talking about people losing their lives, or loved ones. And we need to remember them.
This year we’ve seen that right across the globe – in Asia, Europe, North America, Africa. And a super El Nino is on the way, meaning 2027 is predicted to be even worse.
We can’t just wave these things away by saying: ‘this the new normal’, and we can’t talk about climate change in the future tense anymore – it’s here, right now.
But of course that’s why we’re all here at Climate Week NYC. All of us here have a shared goal and a vision of a better future, a world that is more sustainable, less polluted, powered by clean energy and electrification.
But to get to that better world, I want us to be more honest.
I personally tend towards the optimistic (some might say annoyingly so), and that’s helpful in this line of work – you know, for things like getting yourself out of bed in the morning.
And I really like all of you - you’re my people. So I’m not going to call us liars. But maybe I can use that nice, very British word: fib. I think we tell ourselves several fibs to manage the mental load of the challenge.
The first one is that the economics of the transition is now unquestionable, and the politics will therefore follow.
All of us here see the business case. Solar is the cheapest source of electricity in history. And when war in the Gulf led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, I suggested Trump might end up with a Climate Prize for his unrelenting work in boosting demand for renewables.
In all seriousness though, 2026 has seen record after record. Wind and solar now supply close to a fifth of the world's electricity, and renewables have overtaken coal to become the world's largest power source. India saw its largest-ever annual increase in renewable generation. Across Europe, solar output hit new records, and China… is producing and exporting EVs and e-trucks at an incredible scale.
But good economics don’t inevitably lead to good policy.
Not when vested interests are pushing back, and people are making so much money on short-termism.
We MUST turn the economic argument into corporate and political courage. That means using our voices and our influence to push for the long-term political strategies we need, rather than appeasing the polluters and populists.
The second big fib is that we can do all of this without saying the word "climate."
This summer, Europe saw record-breaking heatwaves – but from just following the media you wouldn’t know they were driven by climate change. The US administration is eliminating the word ‘climate’ from public records and it’s pulling research funding. Many companies are falling in line, and have all but stopped talking about climate.
We MUST resist that erasure. If WE don’t talk about it, others will – and they’ll use the space to peddle lies and disinformation.
Silence isn't neutral, it’s dangerous. Silence enables inaction, and inaction leads to more climate change. More flooding, more fires, more empty supermarket shelves, more pollution, more uninsurable homes.
We need to keep talking about the root cause. Yes, we need new language and yes, we need to explain far better how climate change impacts people’s lives. People shouldn’t need a climate dictionary when they come through the door – there shouldn’t even be a door. Because we need to grow this movement, and it needs to talk about climate.
The third big fib is that the only people slowing us down are big oil and gas.
Let’s be clear, the incumbents are a big part of the problem: in particular the vast amount of money that is made by industries which are killing us.
But it’s not a small, well-defined set of bad actors. It’s also their enablers.
Disinformation is big business, amplified at dizzying speed on social media and through AI. Through rage-bait as a business model for media. By right-wing pundits who lie about renewables and EVs, providing ammunition for politicians to weaponise people's fear.
As decision-makers in business and policy, we can break that vicious circle. We can change policies, change algorithms, hold companies that spread misinformation to account, pull advertising, fund science.
And we can ALL be vocal.
It's time to face the truth, and that's hard in a world where truth has lost so much of its currency.
But the truth is: we’ve been making ourselves smaller and quieter, at the exact moment we should be bigger and louder.
So that’s what this week is all about.
We’re called CLIMATE Week NYC for a reason. We’re here to find climate solutions, and turn our energy into impact and action.
We need to keep banging this drum – not quietly, not apologetically, but loud enough to shape the future.
Let's get to work.