Is climate change the biggest long-term management problem facing business?

04/02/14
Author: 
Victor Lipman

Two recent communications from respected global organizations have underscored the long-term impacts of climate change – and the potential vast effects on business. Communiques from the World Bank and the United Nations both highlighted the complex, long-lasting and extraordinarily costly nature of the problem. Noting that  ”weather-related losses and damage” have quadrupled from $50 billion a year in the 1980s to around $200 billion a year in the last decade, the World Bank commented:  “In corporate boardrooms and the offices of CEOs, climate change is a real and present danger.  It threatens to disrupt the water supplies and supply chains of companies as diverse as Coca-Cola and ExxonMobil.  Rising sea levels and more intense storms put their infrastructure at risk, and the costs will only get worse.”