For only $99 and a trip to Toronto for July 15, you can hear from big-money and a federal cabinet minister about change coming up for businesses everywhere. The focus here is on the financial sector, but the message is clearly relevant to all. The subject is Climate Change and Financial Markets. The organizer is the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
Here in BC, we continue to push ourselves as carbon dealer to the world. LNG, coal — c’mon down, we got all you want. And just look, we’re building bigger coal ports and soon (real soon now) LNG plants that will be our economic savior and the envy of the world. Carbon budget? Why, that’s a problem for someone else. We just sell it.
From the event organizers:
Climate change, emerging government and investor pressure for reduced emissions, and the evolution towards a low carbon global economy create significant risks and important opportunities for Canada’s financial sector. Markets and market regulators throughout the world are responding in numerous ways.
Mark Carney is at the center of these developments. Governor Carney has emphasized the importance of ensuring that the financial system is resilient to these dynamics so that it can adjust and finance the transition to a low carbon economy efficiently. Last year, the G20 asked Governor Carney, as Chair of the Financial Stability Board, to review how the financial sector can incorporate climate-related issues in corporate reporting. The Task Force on Climate-Related Disclosure (*) issued its Phase I report in December 2015, and its final report is expected later this year.
Join Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England and Chair of the Financial Stability Board and the Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment and Climate Change, as they discuss the implications of climate change initiatives for the financial sector in Canada and worldwide.
So why bother with this work? Can’t we just plow ahead as if it were still 1950?
(*) There is also increasing agreement in the business and financial communities that some degree of climate change is inevitable, and that its impacts, both physical and nonphysical, may present material risks and opportunities that span both adaptation and mitigation strategies. In the runup to COP21, 350 investors representing more than US$24 trillion in assets under management called on world leaders to forge a meaningful and ambitious climate agreement, in recognition of the risks that climate change presents to their investments.
It’s great to see business leaders and government officials addressing climate change in creasing numbers every year.
Related to the policy and opportunity end of it, here is a link to an informative piece in today’s Sun by David Boyd (SFU), Hadi Dowlatabadi (UBC) and Usman Viliante (Corporate Policy Group LLP). They recommend upping the carbon tax dramatically, regulating out of existence energy inefficiency in housing, machines, etc. concurrently with eliminating grants for efficiency (i.e. make energy inefficient and high-carbon products unavailable, knowing the operations side will save money over time), and building a new national clean high voltage DC electrical grid to make it easier for the private renewable energy sector to deliver carbon-free electricity locally and nation-wide.
It’s a different view to be sure.
http://vancouversun.com/opinion/opinion-wanted-climate-policies-that-work
People are generally more concerned about their jobs or incomes than a possible temperature change in 100 years. It is mainly securely employed civil servants ( including the bloated UN) grant seeking scientists, socialists that now co-opt the environment for their cause and the eco-warriors ( funded by rich celebrities or billionaires ) that still drive this agenda that man majorly affects the climate. Most people could care less. It is warming mainly naturally. People understand that and that warming has implications on refugees, on the ocean, on agriculture, on finances.
Perhaps if we changed the debate to air pollution reduction or clean soil or reduction of environmental degredation people would actually care.
See also Ontario’s eco-suicide of their energy industry. Rather than expanding clean, plentiful and cheap hydro they now spend billions of $s they do not have on wild wind or solar schemes, and soon electric car subsidies. Eventually – likely soon – this will end as Ontario already had the highest sub-national debt per capita on the planet and a tanking credit rating . The third biggest item of the provincial balance sheet after education and healthcare is interest payment on their debt.
So yes, excessive spending , finance and irresponsible green schemes are indeed related although somehow I doubt that this will be debated at this “elite meets green” conference.
The LEAPistas will love this eco-gabfest, huddling and reinforcing Tronna’s World-Class prowess. If they’re lucky it’ll be really hot and sweaty.
I’m pushing for more subsidies. Much more. Let the grandkids pay!
Didn’t Canada send the most of any nation to the Paris climate gabfest late last year – all by fossil fuel burning airplane ?
Oh, people don’t have jobs in Southern Europe ? Let them eat cake !
In other news: Leonardo DiCaprio flies his friends 6000 miles so they can listen to his speech on …. Global Warming. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3671903/What-planet-Leo-DiCaprio-flies-LA-friends-6-000-miles-world-listen-speech-GLOBAL-WARMING.html
Leo & Justin share their love for drama and acting: Let’s stick with acting, please. The environmental message is not getting across or is perceived as hypocritical !
If the plebs are stampeding with puckered lips for pablum then sell it to them. Don’t forget to ask for a donation! It’s a great business.