Politico: "The stock market may have a climate change problem"
by Jean Chemnick
Losses to the economy often filter through to the stock market. But high levels of uncertainty around climate impacts make planning especially difficult, said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School.
“Here’s what I'm afraid of: It's going to be much bigger and sooner than most people appreciate,” said Wagner. “But it'll hit us in surprising ways that you and I can't predict right now, and that's of course what makes it even bigger.”
Wagner pointed to 2023, when smoke from wildfires in Canada traveled more than 400 miles to the world’s financial capital, turning the air in lower Manhattan orange and forcing the cancellation of Broadway shows and prompting Wall Street traders to work from home.
“You can model risk, but you cannot model uncertainty, and that's the problem,” he said.
