Over $130 Trillion of capital commits to fight climate change. | 15Rock

The coalition led by former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney announced last week that it had gathered commitments from 450 #financial firms for $130 trillion in capital to fight #climatechange in some way. Yet, the UK-based financial services provider #metrics2gross domestic product (GDP) reported Tuesday that those same companies are spending as much as $443 billion a year to "undermine efforts" to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels, which scientists believe is necessary to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change.

"We're calling on all financial institutions to immediately freeze new investments in dirty energy and divest from direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds," 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben said Monday in a statement released by the #coalition. "If our institutions won't stop destabilizing our climate, then we will."

McKibben added that because these changes are happening so quickly, companies have a limited amount of time before they "need to get out of carbon entirely."

The report suggests this means the global economy is about to undergo significant shifts in how it performs, with substantial consequences for investors—and especially those involving natural resources like oil or gas reserves.

"The pace and scale of the required changes to energy production and use are unprecedented, as is their interdependence: lower fossil fuel use means tighter carbon budgets for many countries; reduced income from fossil fuels will impact national economies, including through impacts on tax revenues; and unrest or conflict in any region of the world could affect oil prices," the report stated.

"There is no single silver bullet, but action must be taken across all sectors of government – with finance a crucial ingredient – and across society."

As part of that commitment, Carney said his group wants to "mobilize investment capital flows away from high-carbon assets and into climate solutions."