"Our last chance"

Last year, freezing temperatures affected plants and other living things, but also stopped the operation of Texas; the little available gas shot up its price and the consequences are still noticeable in the price of electricity.

Banks, the financial system as a whole, paid more than $ 10 billion worth of insured goods, according to the Federal Reserve in Dallas, but that was not the main economic damage: how much less is the infrastructure worth that nobody knows if will it fail again this winter?

Now that the temperatures present extreme scenarios... How many assets are already worth less, without people knowing? Bank managers are finally afraid of climate change.

The United Nations meeting in Glasgow, UK, ended on November 12 and will not be like others that almost no one paid attention to. It is COP 26, or the 26th Conference of the Parties, convened by the UN for country leaders to address climate-related issues.

There are politicians and officials, who were added in a marketing coup superstars like Blackpink - representatives of Korean pop - with their 42 million followers on Instagram. But that does not make this meeting different from the previous 25.

If we do not act with determination, we are literally playing our last chance to change the course of things, said the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. He referred to the conservation of species, including humans, which can be achieved by dramatically reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

What makes this meeting different is that the weather has already messed with business. The concern was evidenced by at least two powerful characters.

At the beginning of this year, Larry Fink, president of Blackrock, recognized that companies that take care of the environment, society and “the governance” of their own administration (ESG), offer more returns to the clients of this huge investment firm.

Climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on low-income communities around the world. Is that an E (environmental) or S (social) problem? The magnate wrote on that occasion.

A few months later, Blackrock supported a revolution on Exxon's board of directors, to include environmentalists there.

Agustín Carstens, from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) that he heads, called this year all the leaders of central banks such as the Bank of Mexico and the Federal Reserve, to measure the threat of the "Green Swans" that are approaching ... events not predicted like the one that happened in Texas, derived from climate change.

In that conference, Christine Lagarde, of the European Central Bank, warned precisely about the possible deterioration in the value of the assets that protect guarantees of loans granted by the bank.

Imagine the faces of those who authorized credits to install, say, one of the pipelines that could not function in that state. Will you be able to collect the full credit? How much is that guarantee worth now?

Remember the floods near your house and how many businesses were affected. Many businesses were established precisely through a loan that is now going into complications.