Ax'21 - Climate change poses risks to financial stability - How to overcome the cost?
Climate Change is by far the most pressing, existential crisis ever faced by mankind. Our uncontrolled greed dressed up as growth has now led us to the tipping point and we are facing a "Climate Emergency". 14000 scientists from 153 countries recently signed off a document which predicted "untold miseries" that will befall humans and everything on this planet if we did not act yesterday. The act means we work on transformative change, much of which calls for transition from a high carbon to a low or neutral carbon economy. This is a multi generational planetary scale act and in the face of competing interests and ideologies will in the best case scenario take time.
Therefore, anthropogenic climate change is a clear and present threat to the planet and its economy. In 2019, companies representing US$17 trillion in market capitalisation, reported that climate change could cost them almost US$1 trillion, much of it before 2023, with a potential US$250 billion write-off of stranded assets.
Climate change poses risks to financial stability in the form of physical and transition risks into a low carbon economy. In response, governments and private sector businesses need to consider options that could result in disruptive changes across economic sectors and regions in the near term. They are currently not equipped to price climate-related risks and opportunities correctly and this is where MistEO steps in. We are a computational sustainability company focusing on providing parametric risk transfer and financial mitigation solutions to governments and private enterprises to overcome the cost of climate change. We do that by combining our expertise in climate economics and actuarial science on a smart contracting platform which orchestrates spatio-temporal-analytics, weather modelling, machine learning and blockchain.
Who or what inspired you to be an entrepreneur?
I read Small is Beautiful by EF Schumacher in the early 2000s and was inspired by its message ever since.
If you would get 10 billion euros right now, what would you do?
Invest, Invest, Invest in people to change their consumption from global to local.
Who is your favorite superhero?
Philip J Fry from Futurama, he is a superhero for sleeping through the apocalypse.
If you could change just one thing in the world, what would it be?
Would change the ending of Game of Thrones.
Main course at dinner, choose: a) Monkey brains with devils sauce and baby vegetables, b) lab grown steak from human cells and béarnaise with crispy fries, c) Organically grown Nepenthes Truncata salad, including tomatoes, sweet blue peppers and glowing mushrooms with a small chance to kill you instantly.
d) Cassava. Cassava is good, Cassava is Great, Cassava Works.
