When It Comes To Planning Around Climate Change, Money Talks

There are no scenarios in which climate change extinguishes the entirety of human life.  The planet may warm by 5 degrees C (9 degrees F), and, though the amount of human suffering will be beyond our capacity to imagine, those families who go into this catastrophe with some level of wealth will be able to deal with the worst conceivable outcomes.

Moreover, there still exists a slim minority, e.g., the supporters of the President of the United States and the PR firms that work for the oil industry, that enthusiastically promote the myth that the whole concept of anthropogenic global warming is a hoax.

However, the key to putting all of this into perspective, (perhaps the key to understanding anything of any major importance in our civilization) is to follow the money.  What should we make of this article explaining how economists at JP Morgan are warning that “human life as we know it could be threatened by climate change?”

Talk about climate change denial is cheap if you’re a PFC in the Marine Corps or a Honda Civic salesperson; such opinions cost no one anything at all.  But suppose you’re an executive in the largest bank in the United States with total assets of $2.7 trillion?  The answer?  Opinions based on the president’s Twitter feed don’t mean a goddamned thing.  If you don’t formulate investment strategies based on scientific facts, you never would have gotten within a million miles of that career position in the first place.