If a financial adviser advises you to cash in some of your 401(k) to cover living expenses, fire said financial adviser immediately and leave them the harshest possible Google review. Yet in its panicky retreat from the climate fight, Wall Street is doing just that, stealing from its own future wealth in exchange for short-term cash and comfort.
By deciding en masse to abandon climate ambition and embrace the fossil fuels destroying the environment, financial firms will make it more difficult to limit that destruction and the economic and financial reckoning it will bring.
Several recent studies have suggested that letting the planet heat to 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages — the path we’re now following — could slash global gross domestic product by a third or more. That’s more than $30 trillion — the equivalent of wiping out the whole American economy. Unchecked climate change is “a recipe for permanent recession, meaning continuously shrinking economies, failing businesses and significantly increased unemployment,” U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Steill said in a recent speech. Banks will always find ways to eat, of course. But when the pie is 33% smaller, everybody ends up hungry.
