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Comment by raxxorraxor | Hacker News Reader

This is probably the least offensive thing this particular bank has done. Leaks suggested it is basically a criminal organization in the heart of Britain and operating internationally.

> head of responsible investing

I cannot imagine the inside jokes for that position.

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He did not say anything irresponsible, quite the opposite. I suggest you watch his speech, which was actually very interesting.

His quote about Miami is truncated in order to completely misrepresent it. As another commenter mentions, he actually said ""Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six metres underwater for ages, and that’s a really nice place. We will cope with it."

Remember that this was a speech on climate risk aimed at investment bankers. He did not deny or dismiss climate change, but expressed his opinion that the risk (mainly to the economy and financial markets) is much lower than usually claimed.

And how do you cope with the numerous species which will die, the coral reefs which are largely already dead, and the scorching heat waves causing a feedback loop to spin temperatures even higher?

There's not one thing, and it's not easy to predict actually what will happen with this epic experiment.

The coral reefs are not "largely already dead". They are actually in rude health with coverage being quite high lately:

https://www.netzerowatch.com/peter-ridd-record-coral-cover-o...

Please describe the impact of dead coral reefs.

I mean we cut down most of the trees on the East Coast at one point and the impact was?

(And last I heard it was sunscreen killing them, not global warming).

> his opinion that the risk is much lower than usually claimed

Like the storied automotive industry bean-counter that decides the lawsuits from fatalities will be cheaper than spending money on a more expensive part that is without some particular flaw.

Otherwise I am not sure why the CEO of his company suspended him.

We probably did not watch the same speech. Spent as head of responsible investing, minutes complaining about the amount of work his team has to do while addressing climate change concerns. Made it worst by providing the example of Y2K and how come the world did not end and the elevators did not stop...

They did not stop because of Y2K mitigation work...

I think that the head of responsible investing at a major bank is fully within his job's description by stating his opinion that climate risk is very low compared to all the other risks to investing and the economy and that he therefore thinks that his team spends too much time on the topic because of the hyperbole surrounding it (his words).

They didn't stop because Y2K was mitigated successfully, which is his overall point if I understood the talk correctly. At the time many people made claims that the world would end - they believed the problem wouldn't be mitigated and planes would fall out of the sky, etc.

As a Netflix series would be toned down as too outrageous :-)

"History of HSBC controversies": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC#Controversies

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