How do business actually talk about climate change

GOn Raetings Los Angeles, where The Milken's global conference ended earlier this week. For the unintentional, Milken is the main stop of many business and financial leaders' conference guides – a great way to escape Manhattan's shoulder brush with industry titans and Beverly Hills with top designers.

This is far from a climate conference. This year, public sessions were drawn by US Treasury Secretary Scott Besent and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang packed ballrooms. But for many, the real draw of the conference is the discussions behind the scenes-the opportunity to collect information and make transactions.

For me, Milken is a great place to take a heart rate about how the key figures in the business and financial world feel energy, climate and related issues. There is no doubt that the climate has slipped from the center, as CEOs are fighting tariffs and what is diplomatically referred to as a rapidly changing political environment. At the same time, it may be a surprise to those who simply follow headlines, but this topic is well-placed on the company's agenda only on the ballroom discussion panels in The Beverly Hilton in Milkan, but also in scenes conversations that take place in private meeting rooms, nearby restaurants and even

The picture that appears for me is dynamic. Companies are trying to navigate the increase in climate regulation in many jurisdictions around the world, while winning with the US government who does not want to hear about it. They are trying to protect their activities from the risks associated with climate change while maintaining their financial resources at uncertain economic times.

“I have had hundreds of conversations since the elections. I've never talked to a company that said,” You know what? We let go of our zero-zero target, “said Nili Gilbert, deputy chairman of Carbon Direct, a carbon management company. “But there are many conversations about the temporary strategy.”

My conversations in Milken will inform my report in the following weeks, but now I want to point out some of the things that stood out for me:

Physical risk

Much of the intersection of the business and climate is focused on how companies can reduce their emissions. However, companies are also forced to investigate how the physical risks of climate change can affect their activities. This rethink is the result of the rules of disclosure of both climates in Europe, which require companies how climate change threatens their activities, and recent climate -related disasters that have brought these realities home.

Many companies want to avoid direct climate risk talking. This is not a great Mrs. However, a careful overview of the later sustainability initiatives of many companies makes this link obvious. Think of a farm that helps farmers to use less water, or a fashion company that diversifies the fashion company where it buys materials. “Mapping these effects and threats is crucial,” said Melissa Fifield, the leading of the BMO Climate Institute, on the panel, which I moderated, focused on water and climate. “This is an important impact on many companies.”

Investment speed

The climate is not an island. Trillions of investments that the world must relieve and adapt to climate change are forms that otherwise be classified as infrastructure, venture capital or private capital. And the uncertainty of the moment – political and economic – has reluctantly made companies and investors to make big bets and focus on saving cash instead.

“These property owners … want to focus on climate and infrastructure,” said Mark Berryman, partner of Kapricorn Investment Group, Impact Investing Fund, dairy panel. But “they can just make their belts in general, even if it was not an investment on the climate,”

In the meantime, AI is a bright place about how companies could focus on their investments. If I have written Before the competition to build data centers, he has created a pure energy competition for the construction of the competition.

Financial innovation

Innovation is usually based on new technologies, but financial innovation can be just as important for bringing pure energy to the market.

At the entire conference, it was calming at the intersection of the climate and finance at the intersection of the climate and finance from the different ways in which companies could soon raise the money needed to implement climate projects. This includes long -term conversations such as carbon markets and mixed finance, where public or charitable dollars are connected to return investments. However, it also includes new vehicles such as private credit, an evolving asset, where outside the typical banks outside investors ships directly to companies.