Financial Climate

It’s widely known that simple measures taken before climate fueled disasters can prevent human suffering and save enormously on the cost of rebuilding. But human nature is that people procrastinate—sometimes until it’s too late. Another problem is cost. Even if making buildings or infrastructure resilient saves money in the long term, it can be expensive in the near term.  Gina Hardy is the CEO of...

Wars and national defense cause enormous greenhouse gas emissions. But military-related climate pollution is generally excluded from climate change emission totals, including those reported under the UNFCCC (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).  Obviously, the Trump administration has been pushing US allies to shoulder more of their own security. And many European nations ha...

Catastrophe bonds, or cat bonds, have exploded in popularity in recent years. They have emerged as a critical financial tool to foster resilience from hurricanes and other disasters that are made worse or more frequent by climate change. By the end of 2025, more than $60 billion in cat bonds were outstanding.  The world’s leading firm in structuring cat bond transactions is Aon Securities. My gues...

For decades, municipal bonds have made up a vital asset class for savers, retirees, and institutional investors. In the United States, that market is worth more than $4 trillion. At the same time, the revenue from issuing muni bonds pays for nearly 70% of the country’s infrastructure—everything from roads and bridges to water purification and sewage treatment plants. Yet as the effects of climate...

Like so many things in Silicon Valley, venture capital investment in climate tech is cyclical. Climate tech first gained attention from venture capitalists starting around 2006, thanks in part to legendary venture investor John Doerr. After initially seeming to fizzle, climate tech VC bouced back. In 2021, at least $49 billion of climate tech VC investments were made, which PWC estimates at 14% of...

In the U.S., between 2020 and 2024, the total cost of major weather related disasters averaged about $150 billion per year. That’s more than five times the annual average during the 1980s, even after adjusting for inflation. At the same time as they’ve gotten more costly, major disasters have become more frequent. Inevitably, increasing losses have begun to strain property insurers. In some areas,...

Few people are more closely associated with the climate movement than Bill McKibben. In 1989 he published The End of Nature . It was the first popular book for a broad audience on the climate crisis. Over more than 35 years since then, he’s written about 20 books, and many, many articles in prominent publications. In 2008, he founded a climate advocacy nonprofit called 350.org, which now has about...

Anyone paying even a bit of attention to climate solutions knows that we’ve seen in recent years tremendous development of wind and solar power generation. Most people also understand that that development needs to continue, along with deployment of other carbon-free power sources.  But in order for the clean energy transition to succeed, we also need to make ambitious improvements to America’s tr...

In the last episode of this show, I had the privilege of talking with Elizabeth Burch and Adam Orford, two law professors from University of Georgia. They helped me to better understand many of the types of climate lawsuits that have proliferated in recent years. But there are so many varieties of climate litigation that there’s a whole other category we barely touched on, which has special releva...

In recent years, as climate change has gained attention, there's been a proliferation of climate related lawsuits. They're based on a wide variety of legal theories. Some are brought under federal statutes like the Clean Air Act, others are brought under state statutes. Still others rely on common law, which is so old that it predates the widespread use of fossil fuels. Some of these law...

The Paris climate agreement was designed to keep Earth habitable through a framework of national emission reduction commitments. But actual binding laws enforcing those commitments are still lagging behind. In response, many corporations have promised to reach net zero emissions voluntarily. Many have released plans of how they intend to do that. And consumers and investors have sought to hold the...

InnSure is a nonprofit organization that fosters insurance-related innovations to address climate problems. Usually, we think of insurance as a tool for climate change adaptation—and it is. But InnSure also looks at insurance as an indispensable tool to help implement and scale emission-reducing technologies. I wanted to understand better why and how that is. I also wanted to learn about the enorm...

More than ever before, advocates are pressuring private-sector companies to take action related to climate impacts. One thing that’s increased the potential effectiveness of these tactics is the tremendous concentration of corporate voting power in the hands of a small number of enormous asset managers. And at the same time, huge, secretive, private equity firms are amassing control of privately h...

Robin Millington is the CEO of the London-based nonprofit financial think tank Planet Tracker. She talks about how her organization uses sophisticated financial tools to make markets more environmentally sustainable. https://planet-tracker.org/

Ben Keys, a professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of Business talks about the effects of climate risk on insurance, property values, and real estate markets.  Relevant Links: Ben Keys New York Times guest opinion on climate risk and homeowners' insurance Ben Keys Congressional testimony https://firststreet.org/ https://www.nber.org/papers/w27930 (Ben Keys and Philip Mulde...

In 2012, Emilie Mazzacurati founded a company called Four Twenty Seven. It pioneered the practice of applying esoteric scientific climate models to help businesses manage climate risk. She sold the company to Moody's in 2019, and stayed on to manage it as Moody's Global Head of Climate Solutions. She's now working on a new venture related to climate mitigation.    Emilie talks about...

Ambassador Janine Felson is an expert on international climate finance frameworks and governance structures. She served as a senior diplomat from Belize to the United Nations. She contributed to crucial international negotiations, including the 2015 Paris climate agreement. She also held key roles as a negotiator and strategist on behalf of a coalition of countries facing extreme climate vulnerabi...

In 2020, Ulf Erlandsson founded a nonprofit activist think tank called the Anthropocene Fixed Income Institute, or AFII. Through sophisticated analysis of bond markets, the organization seeks to hold corporations and governments accountable to climate goals.  Erlandsson worked for many years as a bond trader and fixed income portfolio manager, including on behalf of AP4, a Swedish public pension f...

Today's guest is Dimitry Gershenson, co-founder and CEO of Enduring Planet. Enduring Planet is a startup financial technology firm that lends to climate-focused businesses. It provides financing without the need for an equity stake, collateral, or personal guarantee from funding recipients.

Today’s guest is Kingsmill Bond, a longtime equity analyst and strategist, who has provided insights on the energy industry on behalf of some of the largest banks and asset managers in the world. After recognizing the implications of the energy transition for financial markets, he went to work for the pioneering London-based nonprofit financial think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative. Still in London...

In today's episode, climate economist and lawyer Danny Cullenward discusses Making Climate Policy Work , a book he wrote with coauthor David Victor.  He talks about how structural political forces so often prevent cap-and-trade programs from working in practice the way they're supposed to in theory. He explains how industrial policy, usually thought of as less efficient than tradeable po...

Today’s guest is Franz Hochstrasser, CEO of Raise Green. Raise Green is an SEC and FINRA-registered online marketplace through which individuals and institutions can invest in startups and other private companies pursuing climate solutions. It serves as a vehicle for for-profit enterprises with a climate focus to raise money from small (as well as larger) investors. Note: Neither this podcast nor...

Bryan Garcia talks about how Connecticut Green Bank has devised innovative financing tools to bring clean energy solutions to businesses and households. He explains how its programs have been designed to include people in lower-income and minority communities. We also talk about how green banks are evolving and expanding nationally, and how the tens of billions in new federal appropriations for gr...

Sylvia Leyva Martinez, an expert on utility-scale solar at Wood Mackenzie, talks about the challenges and complexities of the solar industry’s current astronomical growth.

Henry Sanderson discusses his book Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green .