Pacific Gas and Electric is a company that was just bankrupted by climate change. It won't be the
last
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/monkey-cage/wp/2019/01/30/pacific-gas-and-electric-is-a-company-that-was-just-bankrupted-by-climate-change-it-wont-be-the-last/
On Tuesday, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E
— California’s largest utility and one of the United States’ largest investor-owned electric utilities — filed for bankruptcy. It claimed that bankruptcy was its “only viable option” because of liabilities arising from numerous California wildfires that some, including a federal judge, have traced to the company’s power lines.
Most scientists agree that global warming worsened the effects of the decade-long drought in California, making it more likely that each errant spark could cause unprecedented damage. PG&E; did too little too late to manage this growing risk, and it is far from alone. As we explain below, PG&E;’s crisis is just one example of how climate change is creating massive risks for U.S. corporations.
PG&E;’s bankruptcy is a symptom of a more general problem: Corporations haven’t priced in the consequences of global warming. A recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that corporate expectations for current and future spending on the management of physical risks from climate change are off by two orders of magnitude. Companies and investors are still drastically underestimating the risk that climate change poses to both their infrastructure and their underlying assumptions about economic prosperity.
Indeed, PG&E; arguably paid more attention to climate change than most U.S. companies. PG&E; has done perhaps more than any other U.S. utility company to decarbonize its energy supply. It invested heavily and early in both renewables and energy efficiency. It played an active role in California’s landmark carbon market. And after years of documented violations and slippery dealings with fire and vegetation maintenance across its service area, PG&E; appeared to be trying to turn around its infrastructure safety record. In 2017, the Carbon Disclosure Project, a well-regarded framework for corporate reporting on environmental and social issues, gave PG&E; the highest mark received by any utility for its voluntary disclosures of its own climate risks.
= new reply since forum marked as read
and they'll survive in any case. They don't want to pay damages so they pretend to go belly up. They've done it before. Their utter disregard for human life is sickening. There are so many things they could have done to save those fire victims, like making sure they got warnings for instance or getting a viable evacuation plan drawn up, never mind mowing the lousy grass or putting their lousy powerlines underground which they probably should have done 80 years ago. But no.
