📝 Editor’s Note
A reminder that we’ve switched to a new podcast hosting service. Listeners should be able to find today’s episode — and all past episodes — on their favorite platforms as usual, but if you’re having problems, please let us know. (There is currently an issue accessing new episodes on Apple Podcasts, this will be resolved shortly).
Also — a reminder that Climate Proofers will be moving off its regular Tuesday scheduling as I head off on paternity leave. A handful of new episodes will be made available over the next two months, and a regular schedule will be resumed later in the summer.
Louie Woodall, Editor
What do investors, corporate practitioners, and climate professionals really think about the consequences of rising climate physical risks?
A recent survey by Climate Proof and Theia Finance Labs set out to answer this question. We canvassed over 80 experts on how governments, markets, and households are likely to respond to escalating extreme weather risks and slow-onset events, and surfaced responses that reveal a broad divergence of views on this most critical of issues.
In some areas, there was an uneasy consensus. A majority of respondents expect governments to choose after-the-fact disaster relief rather than systematic adaptation investment. Most believe insurers will retreat from high-risk areas — even as households increasingly turn to insurance as their primary line of defense. And nearly nine in ten expect meaningful climate-driven migration over the coming decade.
In other areas, though, respondents disagreed — like on how corporations are likely to address climate shocks to their assets and operations.
This episode, Jakob Thomä joins from Theia Finance Labs to unpack the survey results in full, and offer his unvarnished opinions on why respondents may have given the answers they did. He digs into the tensions and contradictions buried in the data, explains why compound and cascading risks are finally being taken seriously, and why the real wildcard in the physical risk story may not be the climate science at all — but the political choices that determine who ultimately picks up the bill.
For anyone trying to understand where expert opinion on physical climate risk actually stands, this episode is essential listening.
Climate Proof and Theia Finance Labs plan to release a full report on the survey results later this year.
💡 Read ‘How Climate Stress Tests May Underestimate Financial Losses From Physical Climate Risks’ by Theia Finance Labs HERE
Read ‘Mandatory Climate Insurance’ by Theia Finance Labs HERE
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Listen by clicking the link below, or tune in via Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
We talk about:
👉 The topline findings from the Climate Proof-Theia Finance Labs survey on physical climate risk sentiment, designed to gauge how experts expect governments, markets, and households to respond to physical climate risks over the next 10 years
👉 Why survey respondents believe governments will default to reactive disaster relief rather than systematic adaptation investment, leaving households largely exposed and creating a pressure cooker for future social and political conflict
👉 What the survey had to say about insurance withdrawal and household vulnerability
👉 How participants are considering climate tipping points and compound risks in their investment plans
👉 Survey participants’ thoughts on climate migration, corporate resilience, and political dynamics
Thanks for listening!
Louie Woodall
Editor
