Price Waterhouse Looks at the Cost of Climate Change and Drought

In politics, you can say anything to get elected. But in business, you have to take the real world into account – and the real world includes climate change.

So Price Waterhouse Coopers, one of the top auditing firms in the country, has just released a serious report on the financial implications of global warming, focusing in particular on one aspect: water.

McClatchy has the story:

Water and electric power utilities face growing financial risks from water scarcity, but the credit rating agencies that rate municipal bonds largely ignore the problem, leaving bond buyers missing some important information, says a new report by Ceres and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Water scarcity — especially in the Southeast, the Southwest and the West — will create risks for thousands of utilities that are managed by municipalities and counties… Investors who buy municipal bonds are “blindly placing bets on which utilities are positioned to manage these growing risks,” the report said.

Earlier in the week Aiguo Dai, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, issued a report illustrating how rainfall patterns will shift with global warming. And it doesn’t look good for a lot of places, including the US. There will be serious repercussions – drought that will effect everything from agriculture to power generation, as well as drinking water for people.

PWC has been promoting business aspects of sustainability and climate change for years, and last month met its own goal of a 20% carbon footprint reduction two years ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, their voice is being drowned out by global warming deniers from the President of the Czech Republic and the shills of big oil.

(via DailyKos)