Couldn't disagree more, Richard. Fancy is spot-on:

“It’s not because they are evil, it’s because the system is built to extract profits,” he said.

Investors have a fiduciary duty to maximise returns to their clients and as long as there is money to be made in activities that contribute to global warming, no amount of rhetoric about the need for sustainable investing will change that, he believes.

“In many cases it’s cheaper and easier to market yourself as green rather than do the long tail work of actually improving your sustainability profile. That’s expensive and if there is no penalty from the government, in the form of a carbon tax or anything else, then this market failure is going to persist,” said Fancy, a former investment banker who now leads an initiative to bring affordable digital education to underserved communities worldwide."

Venture capitalists succeed in a world of consumption - selling more wind turbines, solar panels, natural gas, "efficiency", grid-scale batteries. Creating more jobs and growth.  It's a world that depends on destroying the environment, not protecting it.

If protecting the environment wasn't as profitable as pretending to protect the environment, which would win out?

I am also on Mr. Fancy's side, reluctantly:

1. With our rate of advancement under existing ITC/PTC government policy "incentives" (wind's PTC was first put in place 27 years ago), we should achieve full decarbonization in...99 years.

2. There is not enough political capital in the (free) world to ratchet up gov't penalties/incentive to increase our rate of decarbonization by 3 to 6 times, or more if transportation, industrial, and building usages are included.

3. Current-administration incremental/coercive policies, such as shutting down pipelines and stopping fracking on federal lands have been characterized as "makes no sense" by the N.M. Governor who is 100% a Democrat and climate believer. Arbitrarily eliminating jobs of non-wealthy people with policies that will not deliver 1 pound of CO2 reduction is not a likely fast or politically acceptable path to decarbonization.

4. Note that FDR during WW2 and Trump during the pandemic turned to private industry when they *REALLY* needed to get the job done. Many people are trying to attach unrelated issues to decarbonization (equity, justice, profits demonization, etc. etc.). If decarbonization is really "the defining and existential issue of our times", trying to make the effort carry tons of unrelated baggage is not helpful.

5. For the above reasons I have come to believe that our only chance of achieving our goals is via a carbon tax and businesses making related economically optimized decisions.

6. I am *NOT* in favor of a carbon tax implemented as a 100% incremental "take" on the economy. I am also not in favor of a re-distributive carbon tax (see #4 above). I personally think that some existing taxes should be eliminated concurrently with implementation of a carbon tax. I also think that this is likely the only politically acceptable approach. 

A good debate prompted here!