The business case for fixing Australia’s systemic failures on climate change | Emma Herd, CEO, IGCC

This article first appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 August 2020.

The days of climate change being seen only as an environmental issue are long past. Large swathes of the private sector now recognise our warming planet poses a systemic financial risk to our country. Our major financial regulators, such as the Reserve Bank, also understand the threat.

But sadly, our national public debate has too often been snared on the cost of the necessary climate policy response. We rarely balance this with the far greater costs of inaction.

And too often we have sought the false certainty of economic modelling about policy outcomes decades in the future. If we take a step back, the facts are crystal clear: runaway climate change will do untold and likely irreversible economic damage to our country.

Read the full opinion piece]]