Report: Companies failing to report climate change

The Ceres network of green organisations and investors and Environmental Defense Fund report found that corporations only offered minimal information to investors on the risks and hazards of climate change. Of one hundred global firms with the largest turnover, 59 made no mention at all of climate change and another 28 did not mention potential risks from an increase in sea levels and other climate change risks.

The report comes as support grows amongst US corporations for the first law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The two fields that withheld the most information, the study found, were the insurance and oil industries. In their financial disclosure forms, 18 of 27 insurance companies made no mention of climate change, a striking figure considering the increasing amount of weather-related insurance claims in recent years due to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ivan. In the oil and gas sector, all but one of the 23 surveyed companies made no mention of the potential risk investors face when putting money into sectors potentially affected by global warming. Exxon Mobil, Apache and Anadarko were specifically mentioned as having weak disclosure.