The Climate of Business #34: Climate change action = a key lever for a stable economy?

The economy is down, bitcoin has never looked worse and evidently the months ahead are looking grim. But rather than overdramatising the scenarios for the future, we need to think of this uncomfortable unexpected opportunity that lies ahead of us.

With our backs against the wall, today our companies have the unique pressure to think about the sustainability transition. Would we have been thinking about speedy transition to renewable energy otherwise?

Our dependency on fossil fuels and supply chains shifts all of a sudden are topics we cannot ignore as we see markets crash and energy prices increase.

We have a chance of a lifetime to get it fixed fast. As Churchill once said:

Climate Change Reality

A climate expert raises concern over severe sandstorms in Iraq (NPR )

50-50 chance planet will temporarily overshoot 1.5 degrees before 2026 (Politico )

Revealed: the ‘carbon bombs’ set to trigger catastrophic climate breakdown (The Guardian )

Climate change: put water at the heart of solutions (Nature )

Brazil is gaslighting its way to a climate misinformation catastrophe (Washington Post )

From bodies to ancient relics: The startling and grim discoveries unearthed by the climate crisis (Independent )

Humans need to help other species face climate change, scientists say (Washington Post )

Bangladeshi children leaving school to work due to climate crisis (Al Jazeera )

New Mexico wildfire puts spotlight on use of prescribed burns (GreenWire )

Climate crisis: what lessons can we learn from the last great cooling-off period? (The Guardian )

Business Climate Reality

Just one of 50 aviation industry climate targets met, study finds (The Guardian )

To fight inflation, we must fight climate change (The Hill )

Israel's Cabinet Endorses Climate-change Bill, Dividing Environmentalists (Haaretz )

Vanuatu’s push for legal protection from climate change wins crucial support (The Guardian )

This is what we need to invent to fight climate change (Vox )

Spain, Portugal to approve gas price cap on Tuesday, PM Costa says (Reuters )

Filipino inquiry finds big polluters ‘morally and legally liable’ for climate damage (The Guardian )

EU Drafts $205 Billion Plan to Wean Itself Off Russian Fuels (Bloomberg )

Fund secures $100 Million to benefit climate change initiatives for people of color (NPR )

Companies confront a new climate challenge: home offices (Reuters )

Reality Check

The instability of our economy will be fixed when we start caring about climate change.

The domino effects of the war in Ukraine have been piling up including:

• shortage of wheat
• shortage of sunflower oil
• gas supply shifts and shortages
• higher energy prices
• volatility of majority of stocks
• massive increase in fossil fuel companies value
• medical gear and drug shortages in Russia

For majority of these issues the key solution would be having reliable and sustainable independent energy sources. For this to be possible we need to have the sustainable transition at the core of any business or governmental strategy.

A few days ago the scientific community raised once again the alarm as we hit new record high co2 concentration levels. This news came along with the announcement that 1.5 degrees temperature increase will come in the coming years rather than decades.

If we don't understand the necessity for an imminent shift we are likely to enter uncomfortably in the next phase of climatic change.

Carbon Price