Bank of England chief joins with Michael Bloomberg calling for disclosure to help capital manage risks and seize opportunities in global warming fight

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The governor of the Bank of England has warned that the fight against climate change will be jeopardised unless companies with big carbon footprints come clean about their exposure to global warming risks.

Writing in today’s Guardian, Mark Carney says a new set of guidelines drawn up over the past year should be implemented so that investors can allocate capital to those companies with the best ideas to hit the target of keeping the rise in global temperature to less than 2C.

Carney, writing jointly with the former New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg, said citizens, consumers, businesses, governments and international organisations were all taking action in response to extreme weather events.

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“The challenge is that investors currently don’t have the information to respond to these developments,” they said. “This must change if financial markets are going to do what they do best: allocate capital to manage risks and seize new opportunities. Without the necessary information, market adjustments to climate change will be incomplete, late and potentially destabilising.”



Bloomberg has been heading a taskforce into climate-related financial disclosures set up in December 2015 by the Financial Stability Board, an international body established by the G20 in the aftermath of the 2008-09 crash with the aim of reducing risks in global markets.

Carney and Bloomberg said in their article that financial disclosure was “essential to a market-based solution to climate change”.

They add: “A properly functioning market will price in the risks associated with climate change and reward firms that mitigate them. As its impact becomes more commonplace and public policy responses more active, climate change has become a material risk that isn’t properly disclosed.”

Bloomberg’s taskforce will on Wednesday publish its recommendations for a voluntary disclosure code. It will cover four areas considered by Carney and Bloomberg to be vital to how businesses operate – governance, strategy, risk management and metrics.

The taskforce included representatives of banks such as Barclays, the world’s biggest mining company BHP Billiton, the Indian steelmaker Tata and the chemical company Dow. All members of the taskforce had signed up to the disclosure recommendations, Carney and Bloomberg said.

“We encourage others to participate in the consultation, to become early adopters thereafter, and to encourage firms in which they invest to also make the disclosures.”