What is the Role for Business in Addressing Climate Change?

Climate Change’s Bottom Line (Burt Helm, New York Times, Jan. 31, 2015)

Also discussed here:  RISKY BUSINESS: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States (56 page pdf, Risky Business Project, Jun. 2014)

And here: Heat in the Heartland: Climate Change and Economic Risk in the Midwest (58 page pdf, Risky Business Project, Jan. 23, 2015)

And here: Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change (662 page pdf, Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, Oct. 30, 2006)

Today we review the work of the “Risky Business Project” which was formed by a group of high level business and political leaders in the USA who wish to examine the probably outcomes of continued inaction on climate change by their country (and the world) while calling for the need to adapt to and minimize those changes. Unlike most environmental issues which have been addressed by going to government action from problem identification, research and policy based on scientific evidence, climate change has been portrayed as an attack on personal liberty through increased government control, camouflaged as denial of the science.

The Risky Business project aims to swing the consensus in the USA from a debate on the science to a consensus based on evidence of economic impacts focused on regional assessments and both on the short and long term. A report similar to the Stern report for the UK estimates $15.8B economic impacts for the USA by 2100. If the Project succeeds in showing how climate change hits the pocket book and business profits, maybe we’ll see that long delayed and necessary action by business, the public sector and government.

To see Key Quotes and Links to key reports about this post, click HERE