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 other his unvarnished opinions on why respondents may have given certain answers. He digs into the tensions and contradictions buried in the data, explaining why compound and cascading risks are finally being taken seriously, why climate tipping points belong in risk models even if they aren’t a near-term threat, 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