Climate change is the key topic at this year’s World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, framed by the face-off between U.S. President Donald Trump and activist Greta Thunberg.
“We must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse,” Trump told an audience that included Thunberg, adding that his stewardship of the booming U.S. economy, spurred on by soaring oil and gas production, meant that “this is a time for optimism.”
Thunberg, in typically uncompromising comments made at either end of Trump’s appearance, accused the elite Davos crowd of “empty words and promises” that amounted to doing nothing about climate change.
Bloomberg spoke to top investors, executives and politicians about the issue and found growing concern over the risks and some specific ideas for what to do. (Excerpts edited for clarity.)
Laurence Fink
Chief Executive Officer, BlackRock Inc.
“Clients worldwide have been asking me repeatedly about how they should frame a portfolio with climate-change considerations. It was very clear to me that this is becoming a dominant theme with more of our investors.”
“Climate change is becoming an investment risk.”
“Some energy companies are the biggest investors in sustainable energy. In America, where we are flaring natural gas, we need these companies to have the resources to recapture their carbon.”
“Let’s be clear, we don’t want to run away from anything. What we want to do is be offering choice and giving our clients the ability to navigate around that.”
“Climate change is not going to be fixed by a central bank. It’s going to be fixed by a combination of public and private.”
Mark Carney
Governor, Bank of England
“These issues have moved very swiftly from being corporate social responsibility issues or more niche issues within finance to fundamental value drivers.”
“I think there has been a change on the assessment investment side. I think we see it very clearly in the City in that climate is becoming one of the vectors of foreign investments so you always looked at credit risks, interest rate risk, future capital but transition risk. where is a company on transition, what’s their plan?”