Investors at UN Summit: Disclose Climate Costs

[Socialist Christian]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&ncid=585&e=10&u=/nm/20031121/sc_nm/environment_financial_un_dc

<snip>
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - State treasurers and pensions funds that help oversee $1 trillion in assets on Friday urged U.S. regulators and business leaders to force corporations to give investors more information on the financial risks from global climate change.



Eight U.S. state and city treasurers and comptrollers and the leaders of two large labor pension funds issued a "call for action" at a day-long Institutional Investor Summit on Climate Risk held at U.N. headquarters. Executives from top Wall Street banks and fund management firms also attended the meeting.


The plan basically asks the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (news - web sites) to impose tighter disclosure, reporting and risk assessment requirements on corporations so that public pension funds can assess more accurately the potential financial risk to their shareholdings from climate change.


The pension funds said a broad swath of industries could be vulnerable to new global warming (news - web sites) regulations or possible future legal action.

[htuttle]

1. Hmm...what would it cost for Florida to go underwater?

How about NYC turning into Venice? Widespread crop failures? Severe storms?

Probably kind of a lot, eh?

[Lisa]

2. thanks for posting!

Interesting. The financial sector (insurance and investments) was one of the first to take the warnings about climate change impacts seriously. They knew how much we could stand to lose.

[hatrack]

3. Especially interesting in light of Exxon-Mobil's statement

On Environment/Energy, I posted a story about the head of the global planning dept.

He said at a meeting that EM is projecting CO2 emission increases of 50% over current levels by 2020 - that is, moving from (approx.) 7 billion tons of CO2 annually to 10-10.5 billion tons.

Now THAT would be interesting.