Since the 2015 signing of the Paris climate agreement, the European Union has become the government standard-bearer for the climate change movement, plunging headlong into the legal and regulatory work required to achieve the United Nations’s global emissions targets.
 
Europe aspires to be the first carbon-free continent on the planet by 2050 and has set aggressive plans to cut the aggregate emissions of its 27 national members by 57 percent before 2030 based on a 1990 reference point. Mirroring the old continent, the U.S. also hopes to achieve a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, with an interim national goal of reducing U.S. net greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030 versus a 2005 baseline. 

To further conscript the private sector into their government’s climate goals, Europe’s financial regulators have passed new rules such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, which mandate climate and other environmental reporting by companies and financial institutions alike to ensure that capital dollars only flow to so-called sustainable activities.