Listen to the Money

Although it appears possible to ignore scientist, conservationist and hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens, investors appear to be waking up to the potential impact of the climate emergency on the business environment. After all what good is a stock market if the building is underwater and the companies listed on the various exchanges are held hostage to an increasing frequency of natural disasters and human dislocations.

Investors, analysts, research firms and companies are putting more emphasis on how climate issues ranging from rising sea levels to record heatwaves will affect profits and revenues in the United States and what companies are doing to address those risks.

As a result, fund managers, who typically do not incorporate environmental attributes in their analysis of a company, are taking a closer look at whether the physical locations of their property and equipment will put them at a higher risk of being impacted by climate change.

…there have been 10 weather and climate disaster events that have caused more than $1 billion in damages since the start of the year, already nearly double the average of 6.3 events for each full-year between 1980 and 2018, according to National Centers for Environmental Information.

Politicians may choose to ignore tens of thousands of wild-eyed scientist, uncounted numbers of tree huggers and the rest of us, but they might start listening to the money before it becomes worthless.