If you click here you can watch a 16 minute talk by Stuart Kirk (HSBC's Head of Responsible Investment / Head of Research & Insights) at an FT Moral Money symposium in May. He was suspended by HSBC for his pains, not because what he said was necessarily wrong, but because his remarks were "inconsistent with the bank’s strategy". He has since resigned, noting that he would "continue to prod with a sharp stick the nonsense, hypocrisy, sloppy logic and group-think inside the mainstream bubble of sustainable finance.”
His talk was Why investors need not worry about climate risk. It's already being compared to Gerald Ratner's (in)famous "because it's crap" talk at the Institute of Directors in 1991. Harry Wallop in The Times reckoned that their common mistake was to try to be funny. Climate change, after all, is no joke.
A key point in his talk was that human ingenuity (something our species is rather good at) tends to be discounted in economic forecasting. This is an obvious weak point in all the gloomster pontificating we hear these days where catastrophe is always assumed to be round the corner if not actually right in front of us. Kirk also took a swipe at the IPCC's habit of generalising from worst case scenarios. He's not alone in finding this unhelpful.
There is a lot in these 16 minutes to engage an A / Higher level economics or business studies class that takes climate issues and our futures seriously.
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