Investors say climate change poses biggest risk to their assets, and urge Albanese government to see the economic dangers of a slow path to net zero
So as much as this community leans anti-capitalist (including myself), THIS is how the green transition is going to get traction: get the banks and investment firms to understand that the environment is going to repeatedly punch them in the dick if they don’t move away from environmentally catastrophic investments.
It’s definitely possible to get a lot this way. It probably can’t do enough, fast enough, on its own though — it will take government forcing the transiation to happen. Otherwise, we’ll get the energy equivalent of whale blubber being turned into margarine in order to keep the whaling industry profitable.
No you’re not getting what I’m saying.
Getting people with shitloads of money to recognize that portfolios are gonna fuckin TANK when the climate implodes is what’s going to move the needle at the end of the day. They don’t care about anything except ROI. If that becomes negative for anything related to stuff that’s environmentally harmful, that’s what will change the equation for them.
That might just result in a boom in billionaire bunkers, rather than any kind of systematic attempt at solving the underlying problem.
Big insurance companies are also big institutional investors. They can’t be thrilled that their risk level is uncertain.