Russia is burning (and choking), Pakistan is drowning – major humanitarian disasters which are likely to be in part due to climate change as Pakistan is effectively getting the rain that the Russian plains should have had. A similar thing happened in the UK this winter – we got Arctic weather stuck over us for weeks, while the Arctic had abnormally high temperatures. While the usual caveat must be rolled out – we can’t attribute any one event to climate change – the frequency of such events is increasing as the science would suggest.
Climate change mitigation (cutting carbon emissions) is a medium term measure, but it must be backed up by adaptation measures for the short (and medium) term impacts which are already in the system. Adaptation is normally considered at the regional/national scale, but what about individual organisations? Are you prepared for climate change? Would you be resilient to extreme heat or cold? Are your data servers in your basement and vulnerable to flooding? Are your raw materials grown in a climate sensitive area? After all, Russia has announced restrictions on grain exports.
Of course we can flip this around to the positive. Have you a design, a product or a service to help make organisations, regions or whole countries resilient to climate change? Can you spot a gap in the market? Will climate change produce gaps in global markets for, say, food stuffs? This may sound mercenary, but a robust response to climate change will involve the markets as much as it does disaster relief organisations.
So whether climate change is an opportunity or a threat to your business, you should be factoring it into your business planning.