With much attention currently on geographic locations around the
world where the effects of climate change are thought to be keenly
felt, including the fires in Australia, rising seas in coastal
areas and receding glaciers in the Arctic zone, the potential
effects of climate change on other aspects of human culture, such
as economic decision-making, has not always generated the same
headlines. That is, until a bombshell article published in the DealBook section of
The New York Times on January 14 noted that the
world's largest asset manager would implement policies to
evaluate investments based on issues of sustainability and climate
change. As explained in the article, in the annual letter sent by
Laurence D. Fink, founder and chief executive of BlackRock, which
has nearly $7 trillion in investments, to the CEOs of the largest
companies in the world, BlackRock announced that it intends to exit
investments to the extent they "present a high
sustainability-related risk."
