Climate Change Issues Become Increasingly Important For Financial Institutions

Climate change issues are very much in the news lately, from Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth winning an Academy Award to the possible listing of the polar bear as a threatened species. A "green wave" is beginning to sweep across corporate and civic America. Corporations, governments, public interest groups and academics are taking steps to conduct their businesses in a more environmentally conscious way, including voluntary compliance with emissions targets, promoting "clean technology" and adopting "sustainable business practices", both as solutions to global warming and as new business opportunities.

Recently, attention regarding climate change has been to shift from focusing on major greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, such as power plants, to include other sectors of the economy, including financial institutions and mutual funds. A group of institutional investors representing about $3.7 trillion under management known as the Investors Network on Climate Risk ("INCR",