London was built to keep heat in – not to keep it out.
That was hard to ignore during London Climate Action Week (LCAW), when temperatures soared. Even the Guildhall’s medieval crypt, one of the largest surviving in the city and dating to 1042, offered little relief but did create a sense of shared camaraderie among colleagues during lunch. As I sat in the Great Hall above, I found myself staring up at the soaring ceiling that once sheltered London’s merchant class as they established the laws and regulations that built the city’s wealth. Nearly a thousand years later, people from around the world gathered in that same room to challenge the systems and inequality that have driven the climate crisis and left the world’s poorest to bear the worst of it.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres opened the event with a line that stuck with me: “Crisis brings clarity.” He was blunt about where we stand, that this is both “the best and worst of times.” The climate crisis is compounding every other crisis we’re living through. However, it leaves no doubt that the renewables revolution is no longer a bet on the future; it’s winning the future. The current geopolitical crisis creates an opportunity because “there’s no embargo on sunlight” and “no blockade on wind.” He pushed for taxing fossil fuel companies, demanding a real transition, and holding AI to the same standard: harness its potential, but measure and publicly disclose its land, water, and power footprint.
That determination carried into the America Is All In (AIAI) delegation’s events across the city, including the Local Climate Action Summit. Oleksandr Senkevych, Mayor of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, put his own spin on “build back better” with “build forward greener.” Coming from a city still under active threat, it was a reminder that even amid war, Ukrainian leaders are refusing to treat climate ambition as an issue they’ll get to later.
AIAI Chair Gina McCarthy told hundreds of international delegates what gives her hope: American mayors, governors, and business leaders delivering clean, reliable energy in the US. Regardless of what’s happening in Washington, “state and local levels in my country are working to deliver on the promises they have made to lead our clean energy revolution, hand-in-hand with our international colleagues,” McCarthy said at the Climate Innovation Forum. And even more plainly at the AIAI reception: “We are not giving up on the USA.”
Every one of the sub-national actors Guterres and McCarthy pointed to, cities, states, businesses, and communities, has a partner and ally in higher education. Colleges and universities are anchors in their communities, with real estate and purchasing power they can leverage for state and local decarbonization policies. They lead the world in research, making renewables cheaper and grid technology smarter. They’re training the clean energy workforce that this transition requires. And they’re home to the young people Guterres and McCarthy named as the source of their hope, students who are pushing their institutions to move faster than anyone on Capitol Hill. If the argument coming out of London is that subnational action is what’s carrying climate progress forward while federal leadership wavers, higher ed is an essential partner with societal leverage to pull off a just, well-financed transition, especially for the communities currently locked out of it.
That’s the same conviction Second Nature and the Climate Leadership Network bring to this moment. Climate action happens on campuses every day in academic departments, community partnerships, operations and infrastructure, and student experiences. Second Nature’s role is to be that connective tissue: facilitating cross-institutional and cross-sectoral collaboration that puts the sector’s complementary strengths to work together, building shared milestones and guidance that the whole sector can act on. It’s the same coalition-building instinct that had AIAI stitching cities, states, higher education, and businesses into one voice in London.
The heat we felt in London – whether walking in Hyde Park, sweating on the Tube’s Central Line, or meeting in buildings with air-con pushed to the brink – wasn’t a metaphor. It is our continued call to action.
