The past couple of weeks have made for alarming and depressing reading on the topic of global warming and the enormous changes afoot – or not yet made – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A stark warning from the United Nations, which has long been pushing for action to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Centigrade in line with the Paris agreement, cautioned that the world is way off track with efforts to negate climate change and that the rise will be more like a “catastrophic” 3.1 degrees by the end of the century.

Just days later, tragedy unfolded in Spain as extreme flooding claimed more than 200 lives, sparking a public outcry, and criticism of both state and politicians over climate inaction. Many media articles have pointed to scientists’ beliefs that a warming climate made the floods far worse.

And with a triumphant Donald Trump set to return to the White House after his projected victory in the U.S. election, future climate policy for the world’s largest economy will be back in the headlines before long, with experts having already predicted that it will put the brakes on the move to clean energy. While the environment may not have been a central electoral issue, it was a focus elsewhere, with one CEO warning the incoming President not to row back on climate commitments.

The UN’s warnings, particularly when it issues its regular reports on climate change progress, tend to be stark. The timing of this latest one was, of course, a week before the U.S. election and ahead of COP29.

But even so, the UN is pointing the finger firmly at countries that it believes are not taking sufficient action fast enough, which contrasts with the net zero transition investments made by many large companies and the work they have done to demonstrate their ambition to play their part in a cleaner global economy.

The data even shows that greenhouse gas emissions rose to a new high last year.

With COP29 billed as the finance summit that is tasked with ensuring money is allocated to match the ambition of past conferences, the report was clearly intended to shine a light on what is being done at a national level across the G20 countries to accelerate action.

As the Financial Times noted: “The UNEP report estimated the global investment needed for a net zero emissions transition was $900mn to $2.1tn each year between 2021 and 2050. This would, however, offset the significant costs from climate change, air pollution, damage to nature and human health impacts.”

If you get the sense that the positive vibes given by many firms about their action plans and progress are at odds with this warning and outlook, you could be forgiven for thinking so. The reality is that UN data like this has a habit of pinpointing a gap between recent positive action and a short-term optimistic trajectory, and a long term bleaker picture if what has led to those short-term gains isn’t ‘locked in’ for the longer term. In this case, in the form of sustained investment.

But even then, country data can give a distorted view. The UK, the BBC reported earlier this year, claims to be on track with its net zero transition, but closer scrutiny reveals a real risk of it missing future targets.

Companies that have long embraced the social, commercial and environmental case for emissions reduction and made strong commitments may wince when they see such dire headlines about national action being so far off the mark.

But while that action may largely focus on meeting the needs of their broader stakeholders, we may see more companies calling for faster action from others - governments included, and particularly the new U.S. one - to do much more.