Companies that are not moving towards zero-carbon emissions will be punished by investors and go bankrupt, according to Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England. Carney recently told The Guardian that the longer action to reverse emissions was delayed, the more the risk of collapse would grow.

Carney is an internationally recognized economist and banker who was previously the chair of the Financial Stability Board and governor of the Bank of Canada. He is completing his term as governor of the Bank of England in January 2020 and is one of the contenders to be managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

On October 15, 2019, Carney addressed corporations attending the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) conference in Tokyo. He said they had two years to agree rules for reporting climate risks before global regulators devised their own and made them compulsory. He pointed out the appetite among investors to support companies that understand their climate risks.

“The TCFD needs to reach a definitive view of what counts as a high quality disclosure before they become mandatory. In my view the next two reporting periods should balance the urgency of the task and the imperative of getting it right,” he said (as noted in The Guardian).

Carney is committed to leading efforts to address the dangers global heating poses to the financial sector, from increasing extreme weather disasters to a potential fall in asset values such as fossil fuel company valuations as government regulations come into effect. He points out that US coal companies have already lost 90 per cent of their value and banks overexposed to the sunset sectors are also at risk. Carney also advises that great fortunes could be made by those working to end greenhouse gas emissions and become part of the solution.

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To read the complete article in The Guardian, click here

 

 

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