This book provides the average person with something to do about climate change. Based upon the contributing authors’ years of technical expertise, and their participation in a second international workshop on climate risk, it concludes with a list of action items for the old and young alike. With a ‘systems thinking’ approach, the book captures the latest developments in climate change science, atmospheric data, and public policy from leaders in their fields, including a Nobel Peace Prize recipient and a Fulbright Scholar. The book continues the discussion from the first workshop, detailed in Demystifying Climate Risk Volumes I and II (2017), on environmental, health and societal implications; and industry and industrial infrastructure implications, respectively. While the news about the future of climate change is not good, widespread adoption of these principles could literally transform the world!

This volume is the second annotated collection of essays for the popular press with which I have been involved since 2019; the first was published in March of 2023. Each is annotated with a Prologue (Why?) and an Afterword (What has happened since?). Each was motivated by a climate-related issue that was in the public eye for more than the usual 24 hours. Each discusses the relevance of robust and evolving science to public discourse about climate change. They confront issues involved in building public support for informed decisions about how to allocate scarce funds to personal and social investments to abate, adapt, or suffer in coping with climate risks. The essays sometimes address distractions and deflections that are persistently advanced by organized programs of denial, misinformation, and disinformation as well as the occasional personal attack.

Assess the likelihood, timing and scope of climate risks In Climate Risks: An Investor’s Field Guide to Identification and Assessment, financial analyst Bob Buhr delivers a risk-based framework for classifying and measuring potential climate risks at the firm level, and their potential financial impacts. The author presents a “climate risk taxonomy” that encompasses a broad range of physical, transition and natural capital risks that may impact a firm’s financial profile. The taxonomy presented in the book will be of interest to investors and lenders involved in: The identification and assessment of the potential scope and impact of a wide range of risks that might normally remain outside of more traditional risk or credit analysis, usually for horizon issues; The determination of the points at which climate risks may crystallize into real and significant financial exposure The assessment of the relative aggregate riskiness of portfolios exposed to climate and natural capital risks at the firm level A rigorous and practical toolkit for the assessment and measurement of a broad range of potential climate risks, this book offers fund managers, portfolio analysts, risk experts, and other finance professionals a clear blueprint for assessing potential financial impacts at firms arising from climate change.

Given the industrialized world’s historical dependence on fossil fuel-based energy resources and the now-realized perils of moving beyond the earth’s carbon budget, this book explores the myriad challenges of climate change and in reaching a low-carbon economy. Reconciling the medium-term competing, yet frequently complementary, needs for transition policies, the book provides guidelines for complex and often conflicting climate policy tasks. The book presents empirical trends in the use of carbon-emitting resources and evaluates market-driven short-termism and its adverse impact on resource use and the environment; it emphasizes a medium-term macroeconomic perspective for the transition. The authors attempt a paradigm shift towards a framework of sustainable macroeconomics. They survey relevant historical models, conduct empirical and numerical analyses of the climate change-relevant dynamic models, provide empirical illustrations, and evaluate diverse policy options and implementations together with their historical evolution. New analytical issues are also considered, e.g., strategic behavior in the energy and resource sectors, energy competition and the dynamics of market shares in new energy technology, and supporting policies for dealing with the tipping points encountered in climate change. The authors suggest a multitude of market-based strategies and public fiscal, monetary, and financial policies, and longer-run planning for resource extraction -all suitable for driving sustainable growth and a transformation of the energy sector. The book also examines the multiple delaying forces slowing the transition to a low-carbon economy; these typically arise from short-termism, lock-ins, irreversibility, leakages, non-cooperative games, and other political strategies. Thus, they explain the snail’s pace evolution of current national and global climate policies. The book will appeal to scholars and students of economics and environmental science. It is also relevant for policymakers and practitioners in multilateral institutions, research institutions as well as governments and ministries of countries interested in alternative energy sources, climate economists, and those who study the implementation of sustainable and low carbon-based policies.

Climate change is a major problem, generating both risks and opportunities that will have a direct impact on the economy and the financial sector. In recent years, climate change has threatened both the survival of the financial system and economic development. The growing occurrence of extreme climate events combined with the imprudent nature of economic growth can cause unsustainable levels of harm to the financial sectors. On the other hand, it presents a range of new business challenges. In contrast to the most evident physical risks, companies are vulnerable to transformational risks that arise from the reaction of society to climate change, such as technological change, regulation and markets that can boost the cost of doing business, threats to the profitability of existing goods, or effects on the value of the asset. Climate change also offers new business opportunities, and it has made research in the context of a sustainable financial sector indispensable. The Handbook of Research on Climate Change and the Sustainable Financial Sector focuses on the impacts of climate change on various sectors of the world economy. This book covers how businesses can improve their sustainability, the impact of climate change on the financial sector, and specifically, the impacts on financial services, supply chains, and the socio-economic status of the world. Beyond focusing on the impacts to the financial industry itself, this book assesses how climate change in the financial sector affects the well-being of society in areas such as unemployment, economic recessions, decreases in consumer purchases, and more. This book is essential for stockbrokers, business managers, directors, fund managers, financial analysts, consultants and actuaries, institutional investors, policymakers, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in a comprehensive view of the impact of climate change on the financial sector.

This book presents an extensive review of the context and an analysis of the market for clean energy technologies, with batteries as the primary case study. The focus of this book is on clean energy technology and in particular, on renewable energy and portable, mobile and stationary battery and energy supply. The authors examine how effectively countries with large and advanced economies are building and coaxing the markets needed to effectively mitigate environmental risk. The analysis takes a country-level perspective of some of the largest and most technologically advanced economies in the world including China, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States. The authors explore the measures being taken to foster markets that effectively reduce environmental risk, increase its resilience and even its recovery. In the concluding chapter, the authors suggest that while the market for environmental risk mitigation remains nascent, the possibility for its rapid development is high. A number of market coaxing mechanisms to promote its more rapid development are proposed. The book will be of interest to researchers, policy makers, business strategists, and academics in the fields of political science and business management.

Sustainable investing has recently gained traction throughout the world. This trend has multiple sources, which span from genuine ethical concerns to hopes of performance boosting, and also encompass risk mitigation. The resulting appetite for green assets is impacting the decisions of many investors. Perspectives in Sustainable Equity Investing is an up-to-date review of the academic literature on sustainable equity investing. It covers more than 800 academic sources grouped into six thematic chapters. Designed for corporate sustainability and financial management professionals, this is an ideal reference for ESG-driven financiers (both retail and institutional). Students majoring in finance or economics with some background or interest in ESG concerns would also find this compact overview useful. Key Features: Introduces the reader to terms and nomenclature used in the field. Surveys the link between sustainability and performance (including risk). Details the integration of sustainable criteria in complex portfolio optimization. Reviews the financial liabilities induced by climate change.

Climate Change and the Private Sector explores the challenges of transforming our energy infrastructure to become carbon neutral and adapting to climate change in the twenty-first century. It examines the critical role that the private sector must play in these challenges. To transform the global energy complex to be carbon neutral within a time frame designed to prevent irreparable damage to the environment presents unprecedented challenges. The private sector must deploy financial, material, and engineering resources on a scale never before undertaken — with government providing leadership, removing barriers and supporting industry efforts through policies that mobilize markets to achieve environmental objectives. A key element of supporting private sector initiative to address climate change is policies that help form and sustain markets that supply, finance and generate demand for the technologies necessary to transform our energy infrastructure. The characteristics and examples of these policies are explored in detail. Companies that respond to these challenges both by mitigating greenhouse gases and adapting to climate change will enhance their own competitiveness and contribute to society in the process. Companies that embrace the challenge to decarbonize their manufacturing operations, whether in response to regulation (or the threat of regulation) or market opportunities, invariably discover ways to improve their operations in the process that could potentially enhance their ability to produce better products, more efficiently. The book explores examples of companies that have redesigned their products and manufacturing processes, and in doing so transformed themselves and reshaped their industries. As in the case of companies mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, companies that lead their industries in adapting their own operations to a changing physical environment are more likely to ensure their resilience in a changing business environment. This book provides business, policy and academic audiences with an in-depth exploration of the subject, and a practical guide to action.

Communicating the nature and consequences of environmental and health risks is still one of the most problematic areas of public policy in Western democracies. "Mad Cows and Mother's Milk" outlines the crucial role of risk management in dealing with public controversies and analyses risk communication practice and malpractice to provide a set of lessons for risk managers and communicators. This second edition adds new case studies on mad cow disease in North America, climate change, and genetics technologies. The first of the new case studies brings the story of the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak in the United Kingdom in the 1980s up-to-date. Mad cow disease is still being discovered in UK herds and cases of mad cow disease have been found in twenty countries across the European continent and as far away as Japan with devastating consequences for the food industry. BSE has now been discovered on the North American continent in two cows born in Canada. The original cause of these two new cases is almost certainly importation of infected cattle, cattle feed, or both from Britain. Canadian government regulators and those in the cattle industry have failed to correctly assess the risks of the disease in the Canadian herd, take the precautionary measures needed to prevent the spread of disease, and communicate risks and precautionary measures to the public. The second new study deals with global warming. Not only is every aspect of this risk debate both contentious and difficult for the public to understand but the potential consequences of the risks extend all the way to global catastrophe for human civilization. A new chapter outlines the many dimensions of risk debate in the context of the need for effective and sustained dialogue by an informed public. The last new case study provides an introduction to genomic science, which is placed in the context of both the health benefits expected from genetic manipulation and some of the risk factors associated with it. One example is gene therapy, which can be used to eliminate inherited genetic diseases (i.e. cystic fibrosis), enhance human traits (i.e. athletic performance), and perhaps double life-spans. Gene technologies are relevant to some of the most fundamental human values. This new chapter suggests that we must think about the range of new risks introduced by these technologies as well as the potential benefits - and that we should do this collective thinking soon, since, given the furious pace of genomics discoveries, the possibilities will be with us sooner than we imagine. All of the case studies emphasize the need for effective communication about risks to allow effective dialogue by informed publics on health and environmental risks.

Volcanic Hazards, Risks, and Disasters provides you with the latest scientific developments in volcano and volcanic research, including causality, impacts, preparedness, risk analysis, planning, response, recovery, and the economics of loss and remediation. It takes a geoscientific approach to the topic while integrating the social and economic issues related to volcanoes and volcanic hazards and disasters. Throughout the book case studies are presented of historically relevant volcanic and seismic hazards and disasters as well as recent catastrophes, such as Chile's Puyehue volcano eruption in June 2011. - Puts the expertise of top volcanologists, seismologists, geologists, and geophysicists selected by a world-renowned editorial board at your fingertips - Presents you with the latest research—including case studies of prominent volcanoes and volcanic hazards and disasters—on causality, economic impacts, fatality rates, and earthquake preparedness and mitigation - Numerous tables, maps, diagrams, illustrations, photographs, and video captures of hazardous processes support you in grasping key concepts