Michael Bloomberg leads global push on corporate climate risks

US billionaire Michael Bloomberg will lead an unprecedented push for corporations worldwide to reveal their financial exposure to climate change to investors, a banking watchdog announced today.
Climate experts warn of huge financial consequences if humanity fails to curb emissions of climate-altering carbon gases, tipping Earth towards a future of rising seas, floods, storms and killer droughts.
Carbon gases, which act like a blanket trapping the Sun's heat around Earth, are emitted from a vast array of human activities such as burning coal, oil and gas -- fossil fuels which form the backbone of the energy industry.
The Basel, Switzerland-based Financial Stability Board, a watchdog set up to avert a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis sparked by the Lehman Brothers collapse, announced it would seek to draw up guidelines for companies to disclose the climate risks they face.

A task force, launched on the sidelines of UN talks in the northern outskirts of Paris where 195 nations are trying to broker a climate-saving deal, aims to ensure companies around the world give investors clear, consistent information about the increasing financial risks they face from global warming.
Bank of England governor Mark Carney, a former Goldman Sachs banker and chairman of the Financial Stability Board, warned insurers in London in September that investors faced "potentially huge" exposure to the challenges posed by climate change.

Carney pointed to scientists' calculations that if global warming is to be curbed the world will not be able to burn most of its fossil fuel reserves without using highly expensive carbon capture technology.

The new task force will help investors to "understand and better manage" the climate-related risks, Carney said in a statement released in Paris.
He said former New York mayor Bloomberg, who also founded financial data company Bloomberg L.P., was the "ideal leader" for the task force because of his experience working on climate change and his commitment to transparent financial markets.
"It is critical that industries and investors understand the risks posed by climate change but currently there is too little transparency about those risks," Bloomberg said in the statement.
Julian Poulter, chief executive of Asset Owner Disclosure Project, which aims to protect retirement savings and other investments from climate risks, welcomed the initiative.

Climate negotiators are battling in Paris over a promise by developed nations to mobilise USD 100 billion (92 billion euros) a year from 2020 to help developing nations shift to clean, yet more expensive, energy sources, he noted.