If you haven’t heard about it yet, you will now. It’s called “Risky Business,” and it’s the new economic climate report from a formidable trio of Wall Street titans: former
mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and
hedge fund billionaire and climate activist Thomas Steyer.
They,
along with a yachtload of other one-percenters, now staunchly affirm
that the time has come for American business to accept and prepare for
the real and growing economic costs of climate change.
This
sends a strong signal from Wall Street’s watchtower to the markets that
from an investment perspective, the climate “debate” is effectively
over and done.
I’m not complaining
about the lateness of this report. Better late than later. Resigned as I
am to the reign of plutocracy so long as Scalia law and its talking
money dominate American politics, I’m just glad to know that the smart
money is now betting with the laws of nature, rather than against them.
It’s not called smart money for nothing.
Politically, what’s most noteworthy about this report is that it creates a bipartisan, red-blue or purple coalition
at the tiptop of the U.S. financial elite, bringing centrist
Republicans and Democrats together to try to steer the U.S.S. Titanic as clear as they can from the melting iceberg that looms before us.
In forming this bipartisn coalition, “Risky Business”
marginalizes those in the billionaire community’s Koch-and-carbon wing
who continue to fund what remains of the tea party and climate denialist
movements. Oil and gas billionaires are notably absent from the Risky
Business Project’s list of high-profile members, which includes three
former Treasury Secretaries who served in both Democratic and Republican
administrations.
The “Risky Business” report may mark the beginning of the end of the political logjam in Washington. If
the whales of Wall Street are advocating for a sane response to climate
change, can their employees in Congress be far behind? And
if a bipartisan backroomocracy of billionaires and their governmental
representatives can work together on climate change, maybe they can work
together on immigration and other issues as well. Anything’s possible
in America, so I’m told.
“Risky
Business” advises big investors (I mean citizens) that the costs of
climate inaction exceed the costs of investing intelligently in adaptive
and mitigating responses to the crisis. The longer we wait to respond,
the deeper we sink into the ecological and economic tarsand. Enlightened
self-interest demands that we act aggressively now to prevent future
catastrophe.
Say what you will about
enlightened self-interest, altruism’s more egocentric sibling, but it
beats clueless greed any day, and twice on Sunday.
The
report doesn’t get too specific about what should be done about climate
change, but step one is to face the reality. That would be a good
start, wouldn't it?
The study's risk assessment techniques forecast that over time, extreme weather events will become the “new normal.” Changes will vary by region, but in the United States, the southeast, southwest and upper midwest are likely to be hardest hit by the double impact of higher heat and higher humidity. In summer, Idaho could become the new Texas. (Would that make Texas the new hell?)
At
one point, the report worries that extreme heat and the rising threat
of heat stroke could result in a drop in the labor productivity of
outdoor workers “such as those working in construction, utility
maintenance, landscaping, and agriculture.” The report is silent
regarding the impact of climate change on the productivity of financial
executives.
Further discussion of “Risky Business” appears in today’s New York Times. While the report stops short of recommending specific political strategies for addressing what Paulson calls the “coming climate crash,” Paulson himself has come out earlier this week in support of a significant carbon tax.
Oddly
missing from the report is any serious consideration of how climate
change will affect not just the U.S. economy, but the world economy as a
whole. With the globalization of capital and investment, one can argue
that there really are no national economies any more, but only one
planetary economy and ecosphere, however regionalized, and one emerging
and diversely faceted planetary civilization. The report has little to
say about how climate change will hit the 95.5 percent of the world’s
population that doesn’t live in the United States, or how big investors
should “play” that impact for their own enlightened gain.Maybe these questions will be taken up in a sequel, “Even Riskier Business.”
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