“The last time a new shipping route opened that wasn’t a canal must have been hundreds of years ago, so we thought this might be a very lucrative possibility,” Bonfils says.
Mining, shipping and energy interests may plow more than $100 billion into the melting Arctic region in the next decade, according to a report released in April by Lloyd’s of London.
In the face of these developments, Paulson and Steyer say they worry that policy makers and the public alike are beginning to accept the idea that climate change is inevitable. Their push comes four years after a UN climate change conference in Copenhagen ended in disarray and a measure to regulate greenhouse gases stalled in the U.S. Senate.
The economic study they’re funding, which they’ve dubbed Risky Business, will be published in late 2014. They say it’s just one piece of a larger strategy to reboot the issue as a global priority.
Paulson is focusing his influence on China, a country that has fascinated him since he visited as an investment banker at the dawn of its economic boom in the early 1990s. Through the Paulson Institute, a research and advocacy group at the University of Chicago, he has advised Chinese political and business leaders on energy efficient cities, protecting wetlands and forests, and using more-sustainable transportation systems.
Meanwhile, Steyer, who’s donated $65 million to set up renewable energy research centers at Stanford and Yale universities, has raised almost $2 million for his political action committee. It’s backing candidates across the country who oppose approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ship crude from Canada’s oil sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. At a cocktail party fundraiser Steyer hosted at his San Francisco home in April, he told President Barack Obama the pipeline would be a huge step backward in the fight to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The president has yet to make a final decision on the project.
Can’t Run the Risk
And Bloomberg, 71, whose 12-year mayoralty ends on Jan. 1, has championed a $20 billion plan to construct sea barriers, enhance wetlands and take other steps to safeguard New York from superstorms like Hurricane Sandy, which killed 117 people and caused $50 billion in total losses in the Caribbean and the U.S.
“Whether you believe climate change is real or not is beside the point,” Bloomberg said on June 11, when he announced the plan. “The bottom line is, we can’t run the risk.” Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which is the parent of Bloomberg News.
Steyer and company have their critics. James Valvo, director of policy at Americans for Prosperity, a Washington advocacy group that opposes regulating greenhouse gas emissions, says that while laying out the costs of global warming may be a fresh approach, the effort may be outdated as industries and governments focus their resources on adaptation rather than mitigation.