Meet the world leaders driving us down the ‘highway to climate hell’

Image of the week: Cop27 ‘family photo’

“At this point, maybe we should ask women for help,” wrote climate scientist David Ho in a much-shared tweet responding to a “family photo” of world leaders taken this week at the Cop27 climate conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

To be fair, there are five women in this version of the photograph, while the extended panoramic shot shows a smattering of other women leaders (surrounded by more men, obviously) off to the right of this crop, among them Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Liz Truss would have been there, too, if she hadn’t been quite so useless.

Others pointed out that the real issue was the dearth of younger leaders, who inevitably have more at stake personally in the fight to avoid planetary destruction.

But, yes, the “highway to climate hell”, as UN secretary general António Guterres phrased it, is being paved, predominantly, by the male of the species, and they too control the steering wheel that can swerve humanity away from this road to doom. Something to think about the next time you’re washing out your reusable menstrual cup.

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In numbers: Penneys hun

10%

Decline in like-for-like sales at Primark, known in the Republic as Penneys, in the year to the end of September 17th, compared to its last full pre-pandemic year of trading.

8%

Primark profit margins are set to fall below this level, down from 9.8 per cent. George Weston, chief executive of Primark owner Associated British Foods, says the retailer will “stand by our customers” and won’t be putting up prices despite surging costs.

€1.6 billion

Adjusted operating profit, translated to euro, for Associated British Foods in its recently completed financial year was higher than the equivalent figure for 2019 – so it’s doing something right.

Getting to know: Gautam Adani

Gautam Adani is the third richest person in the world, which might come as a surprise to some people, but the Bloomberg Billionaires Index (as of November 9th) says this is the case so it must be true. Coming in behind some guy called Elon Musk and French luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault, the Indian industrialist briefly held the number two spot in this ignominious list in September, and in multibillionaire terms, there is really just loose change between him and Arnault. (Jeff Bezos is sitting outside the medals in fourth place.)

Worth $136 billion (again, as of November 9th), Adani has seen his wealth expand by some $60 billion in 2022 to date. Having started off as an importer of PVC to India, he now heads the conglomerate Adani Enterprises, with his interests ranging from cement, coal and airports to solar power, while he has also shown a tycoon’s keenness for owning media companies, recently launching a hostile bid for broadcasting group NDTV. Being an ally of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi presumably helps.

The list: Mark’s message

Mark Zuckerberg had a message to Meta employees on Wednesday and, given he was announcing 11,000 redundancies, it wasn’t the best of news. So what else did the Meta chief (and his internal communications gurus) have to say?

1 It’s not you, it’s him: “The team-mates who will be leaving us are talented and passionate,” wrote Zuckerberg, and will doubtlessly “go on to do other great work at other places.”

2 He wants to take accountability: “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” he added, without explaining how he will do this.

3 This hurts him as much as it hurts you: Cutting Meta’s workforce by 13 per cent was “a sad moment”, lay-offs are “a last resort” and – in a phrase also recently used by Stripe – “there is no good way to do a lay-off”.

4 Things might not get better straight away: Meta will be shrinking its real estate footprint, its hiring freeze will extend into the first quarter of 2023 and a review of AI infrastructure is under way, Zuckerberg said, not using the word “metaverse” once.

5 Meta is much misunderstood: “I believe we are deeply underestimated as a company today,” he concluded. “We do historically important work.” It will just be doing it with fewer people for the foreseeable.