The U.K. risk management company Acclimatise has prepared a report entitled Building Business Resilience to Inevitable Climate Change. Carbon Disclosure Project Report 2008. Over three quarters of the world’s largest gas companies were surveyed and the results show that they believe inevitable climate change would impact their business. But here’s the kicker, only 19 percent are currently taking action.
Continuity Central has a good overview of this report that is worth reviewing. The top five industrial impacts of climate change on this industry are:
* Increase pressure on water resources
* Physical asset failure
* Employee health and safety risks
* Drop in value of financial assets
* Damage to corporate reputation
How a major company such as these can ignore changes that are happening right now is beyond me. Even if you deny the existence of global warming there are things you can do to limit your risk. If you wanted to move your business to another location, or your family for that matter, wouldn’t you be concerned about where the water is coming from? You would make sure your equipment was able to survive and even thrive in the new environment. A safe environment would be very important to you and you would make sure that none of this impacted your finances or reputation.
Even if you were confident in all this, you would probably make changes just in case it was worse than you thought, even if it cost a few dollars more. That’s just being smart and being strategic.
We preach to businesses about being smart and being strategic. Businesses should always work in the moment but with an eye toward the future. You may think it’s a political or environmental issue but at its core, it’s a bottom-line business issue.
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