There are now 50 months left. This warning seems all the more pertinent as Frankenstorm Sandy hits the East coast of America, billed as the biggest storm to ever hit the US. The cost of the damage will be billions.
A real deal
There are plenty of other examples too. The Arctic ice has been melting at an unprecedented rate and scientists are witnessing rates of melt far greater than they had predicted just ten years ago. Harvests in the northern hemisphere have been very poor this year, either battered by huge rainfall or suffering drought.
The big problem we face is that as temperatures rise the rate of change speeds up, and a domino effect may start. There are still a few people who don’t believe in climate change, despite clear evidence from history that tells us the world’s climate does change.
The debate as to our own role in today’s changing climate has been endlessly covered and no doubt lead to fatigue on the subject. It seems obvious to me, from evidence in nature (non-human) that imbalances are easily created and we are very much a part of the problem even if we’re not the whole of it.
But action to fight climate change seems to have stalled in governments across the world – their focus taken away by the financial crisis – and yet it is an opportunity to start and reshape sectors of the economy on a more sustainable basis. If climate change is not tackled then the consequences will be severe, so I am hopeful that it will soon become centre stage again.
There are a lot of investment opportunities in environmental technologies and services and investors might want to consider exposure to a diverse sector that looks set to grow.
The Impax ticket
In broad terms the sector consists of water infrastructure, pollution control, waste management, alternative energy and energy efficiency and opportunities are found globally. Exposure to the these sectors can be gained through various investment funds, Jupiter Ecology for example, but it is Impax Asset Management, a specialist investment company in this field, that stands out.
Through their two main funds, Impax Environmental Markets plc and Impax Asian Environmental Markets plc, investors can get diversified exposure by industry and geography. These are higher risk investments as many of the companies are small and valuation can often look expensive, but these are growth companies whose markets could be very large indeed.
The two funds both trade on discounts of 15% and 18% respectively which indicates two things – firstly they are off the radar of most investors and secondly they are very cheap.
