Climate change: Future-oriented investors need to get on-trend

Climate change is a reality. The glaciers are melting and the sea is getting hotter – with intractable consequences like rising sea-levels. But, that said, the climate models are inexact and we don’t know by how much temperatures are going to rise and how rapidly. This is largely a matter of reasoned conjecture. What we know for sure is that climate change is going to be the biggest challenge of the 21st century.

We also know that we have to address man-made global warming by reducing our carbon emissions, which have been rising steadily since the beginning of the industrial revolution. This means that we have to re-engineer almost all the technology on which we have been reliant for so long. New industries such as renewable energy and GMOs in farming are now imperative.

Recently I have written in these pages about the advent of zero-emissions electric cars and even aeroplanes. But how will the electricity to power these machines be generated? Does renewable energy (from solar, wind turbines and other sources) have a future if real prices are allowed to prevail without government subsidy? And what technologies are being developed to reduce carbon emissions in other high-carbon emitting
industries such as agriculture?

In 100 years’ time climate change may come to be seen as a massive stimulus that forced mankind to abandon the dirty habits of the previous 200 years and to engineer a quantum leap in efficiency. And some of the technologies we are developing to combat climate
change will come in handy when we colonise Mars. Future-oriented investors need to get on-trend. This is about your grandchildren’s future. And it’s also about your current portfolio.

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