A risky climate

A report by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, published in late October, warns that ignoring climate change could send the global economy spiralling into the worst recession since the 1929 Wall Street crash. Are banks taking this threat seriously? By Christopher Jeffery

Political rhetoric espousing a desire to tackle the thorny issue of climate change is gaining increasing fervour. First came the release at the start of this year of a film, An Inconvenient Truth, that explains why former US vice-president Al Gore - who has made global warming something of a personal crusade since controversially losing out in the 2000 presidential election - believes there is incontrovertible scientific evidence that climate change is a real scientific phenomenon.

Then, in late