Michael Bloomberg Pushes Companies to Reveal Climate Risk

When former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in March that he would not be running for U.S. president, at least one person may have been quietly cheering: Bank of England governor马克卡尼。In his role as chair of theFinancial Stability Board, Carney had tapped the billionaire businessman in December to head up theFSB对气候相关财务披露的新创建的工作队伍— a position Bloomberg would likely have had to relinquish given the rigors of a presidential campaign.

Bloomberg was a logical choice to chair the task force, which was first proposed by Carney during a在伦敦劳埃德的讲话last September. During his 12 years as mayor of New York, he spearheaded environmental initiatives like the NYC Clean Heat program that dramatically improved the city’s air quality. As Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Bloomberg in 2014 helped launch theCompact of Mayors，致力于减少碳排放并使城市更具弹性的全球官员联盟气候变化这已经成长为500多名成员。和Bloomberg Philanthropies- 2015年分发给5.1亿美元的非营利组织 - 已积极与中国和印度的群体进行处理，以解决气候问题。

“气候变化是世界面临的最大问题，”彭博，74，告诉亚博赞助欧冠。“如果螺旋失控的东西和行星开始变得越来越热，而且没有停止它，你就会根除每一个生物。这个星球看起来像火星。“

卡尼宣布彭博在此期间的预约United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris(COP21), citing the ex-mayor’s “unparalleled track record in a broad range of fields and his lifelong commitment to open and transparent financial markets.” For his part Bloomberg spent five days at COP21, speaking at several events, including a meeting on December 4 he co-hosted with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo that attracted more than 440 mayors to City Hall for theClimate Summit for Local Leaders。“城市已签约以在可比较的基础上每年在其城市提供环境数据，”布隆伯格说。“为什么市长想这样做？因为他们认为这是他们城市的竞争优势。“

The FSB, of course, has been charged by the Group of 20 nations with protecting the stability of the financial system, not saving the planet. But as Bloomberg explains, “everything has a financial component to it,” and the气候变化的影响- 极端天气，沿海洪水，全球变暖 - 对公司，银行，保险公司和投资者具有真正的经济影响。“迷人的事情是没有人们站起来的商人，不存在气候变化，”布鲁姆伯格补充道。“为什么？因为你会被解雇。“

In January the FSB revealed the membership of the 31-person task force, which includes vice chairs Denise Pavarina of Brazil’s Banco Bradesco, Graeme Pitkethly of Anglo-Dutch consumer products maker Unilever, Christian Thimann of French insurer AXA Group and Yeo Lian Sim of the Singapore Exchange. Its mission is to develop voluntary guidelines for companies across industries on what to disclose in financial reporting about “the physical, liability and transition risks associated with climate change.” The task force presented the first phase of its work — a64页报告制定项目的目标和范围，以及3月31日为FSB的有效披露的七个原则。它将在年底之前提供具体建议和披露指南的最终更详细的报告。

Members of the task force admit that the time frame is challenging. “It’s a crazy deadline,” says former Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Schapiro. “It’s very tight.”

“Mike [Bloomberg] and Carney would be disappointed if we weren’t somewhat ambitious,” adds Curtis Ravenel, global head of sustainable business and finance at Bloomberg LP. “We want to be ambitious but practical.”

Schapiro，咨询公司咨询委员会副主席海角金融集团in Washington, was brought in by Bloomberg as part of a secretariat that includes Ravenel and Promontory managing director Didem Nisanci, Schapiro’s chief of staff at the SEC. Schapiro has worked closely with Bloomberg and Ravenel on the board ofSASB, a San Francisco–based nonprofit that is creating sustainability accounting standards for U.S. companies. Climate-related risks are among the material disclosures recommended by SASB. “One of the things we’re going to try to do is build off the many regimes that are already out there, including SASB,” Schapiro says.

解决气候风险的一个问题是，有许多不同的自愿准则和披露它的强制性要求 - 卡尼确定了“近400个举措”在2015年9月在伦敦劳埃德·伦敦的演讲中提供的“近400个举措”。在其第1阶段报告中，全球工作组提供了关于框架的字母表汤的详细信息，包括CDP，CDSB，GRI，IIGCC，IIRC和SASB。特遣部队的一个关键目标是提出一致的披露规则，主席Jane Ambachtsheer表示咨询公司Mercer的负责任投资。“There are lots of different market- or sector-specific reporting guidance and frameworks around climate risk,” she explains. “A key objective of the task force is to take a step back from that and try to focus on financially relevant climate disclosures, looking at all kinds of risk, both historical and forward-looking.”

The hope is that once companies start uniformly reporting about their climate-related financial risk, they will do something to reduce it, including decreasing carbon emissions. “If you get the information out there,” Bloomberg says, “in their own self-interest, the parties that are potentially impacted [by climate change] will take appropriate steps to try to solve it.”