Australia’s finance sector can address climate change
Renewable power is in our hands, Sydney Morning Herald, Paddy Manning, February 12, 2011 “…….Funds must factor in climate change Only the finance sector has enough power to take on Australia’s resources industry, but will it?
We have one of the world’s largest retirement savings pools and sitting atop that pile of money are the super fund trustees who invest money on our behalf.
hey are supposed to have a long-term investment horizon. As Regnan’s managing director, Erik Mather, says, it’s about matching assets and liabilities.
”The average working Australian is just under 38. It’s going to be at least 22 years before they can access their super. The average Australian is going to live until they’re 81. So you’re talking about a 43-year timeline to save for your retirement. Very few people are willing to say there is no chance of climate change risk occurring over [that] horizon. We’ve got to be taking carbon into account.”
This week the Climate Institute and Australian Institute of Super Trustees launched its third climate change survey, sent to every super fund larger than $300 million. Its Asset Owners Disclosure Project is supported by everyone from GetUp! to Greenpeace.
Asset owners, it says, must recognise that climate change is an investment risk with a unique profile: ”For the first time there is a long-term risk that also has high certainty and high impact.”
With carbon prices forecast to hit $US50 a tonne by the end of the decade, it’s an increasingly urgent question for Australian super funds who may find up to 40 per cent of their investment portfolio is concentrated in high-risk sectors. ”A large proportion of this exposure [is] in capital-intensive assets that have lifespans of up to 40 years,” states the institute’s survey methodology.
There are huge implications for asset allocation and traditional portfolio theory. The methodology cites Norway’s giant Government Pension Fund – Global, which has set itself a 5-6 per cent allocation to low carbon assets as a hedging strategy. In Australia, an equivalent policy would represent billions of dollars flowing into the clean tech sector. We’re going to need it.
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1.This month.
The Road to War brings a sharp focus to why it is not in Australia’s best interest to be dragged into a war with China which will almost inevitably go nuclear very quickly. The filmmaker has interviewed some of Australia’s senior foreign policy analysts who have vast experience behind them in analysing what really is going on here as the United States rattles its sabres with China. And sets us up to be its proxy, like the poor Ukranians have been fed into the Meatgrinder. So America can remain the Top Dog. The Road to War reveals how the United States through its spy base at Pine Gap and by stationing six nuclear capable B52 bombers in the Top End (without permission from the traditional owners) is making Australia a prime nuclear target if the current war of words suddenly melts down into full scale war.
The Road to War shows the implicit connection between Carbon emissions (the US military uses a whopping 70% of America’s annual petroleum to move its armies and vast War Machine around the globe to its 800+ military bases..but under a loophole wangled at Kyoto, the US military does not have to report its C02 annual emissions). The Road to War starts screening at selected cities and regional centres in March. See the trailer end for details.
Antinuclear 
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