This year’s Climate Week NYC has given a sharp new focus to the powerful community of corporates and governments that sees climate action as the drive towards a better world for all.
,
Helen Clarkson, Climate Group's CEO, with Ed Miliband, the UK's Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
In a year that was more difficult than most, Climate Week NYC 2025 turned out to be the biggest one yet.
As more than 1,000 events took place across New York, its flagship program convened over 100 top-level CEOs, executive directors, and government figures – from right around the world.
MEET the changemakers ,Artist and activist Mark Ruffalo
Defiant optimism
"It may seem contradictory to talk about power at a time when many of us feel so powerless,” Helen Clarkson, CEO of Climate Group, said in her opening speech.
“By trying to talk about a collective action problem at an individual level, of course it doesn’t add up. But Climate Week NYC has never been about what you can do as individuals, it’s what we can do together.”
Her tone – defiant optimism with a great sense of urgency – set the scene for the days that followed: “We’re here to Power On.”
There’s no question that companies worldwide are facing new realities. Between geopolitical challenges and economic uncertainty, little remains the same. But even when the conversations in New York were different this year, they made one thing clear:
Companies do not want to change course.
They may not want to put a flashy “climate action” sticker on themselves right now. But what many of them continue to do – even if it’s less public – is actively shaping better systems for everyone. They are just looking for new ways to talk about it.
WATCH on demand ,The Opening Ceremony
The creation of a better
That wish for a different narrative wove itself through our flagship program, like a storyline. From footballers to farmers, from CEOs to ministers, speaker after speaker added their contribution to what started to feel like a collective move towards a new language.
This was climate not as compliance, but as the creation of a better.
In conversation with Helen Clarkson, Ed Miliband, the UK's Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, captured the ethos of the event: "There is so much we can learn from each other; we don't do this enough. What has worked elsewhere?"
At Climate Week NYC, this vital exchange of experiences and ideas happens on stages and in the lunch queue, at backstage chats and the closed-door roundtables where top leaders can strategize.
What countless conversations circled back to was this: No company, and no country can achieve this alone. The importance and the power of alliances and of ecosystem-building was at the very fore of this Climate Week.
READ the live blog ,Climate Group's 50 Shades of Green LIVE at Climate Week NYC
A new era of climate action
While heads of government were giving speeches at the United Nations General Assembly, policymakers and companies on the other side of Manhattan created a vision that left no doubt where a prosperous future really lies.
At the end of it all, as delegates left, it was hard not to feel positive about what Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, called “this new era of climate action”.
And this constructive spirit continued through the week, as events organized by hundreds of organizations, businesses and governments carried Climate Week NYC across the city, and made this new era of climate action come to life for audiences old and new.
What next? Perhaps, as the actor and activist Mark Ruffalo put it, we simply “need to drop our fear, and live up to the moment."
READ an extended version ,
The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne