Thomas Kuhn, told us in 1963 in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, we often must wait until a generation passes from the scene.  Today, we humans are out of time.  Climate chaos is upon us and our limiting factor is not money – it never was, since money is simply one form of information.  Time is now our limiting factor, as we have until 2020 to keep CO2 and other greenhouse gases, methane, as well as soot, ozone and other pollutants from raising global temperature more than 2°C.   This means that the game of finance must change to address both its internally-generated global crises and the climate crises which finance has and continues to exacerbate with its blindness to ESG factors and its culture of greed, myopia and short-termism.   We were encouraged by our colleague Mindy Lubber's remarks at the introduction of the statement on September 17th of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC): "We are ready and willing to up the ante and finance the transition to a low-carbon economy.

 

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