Headline doesn’t really make it clear, but he is the nut job that denies climate change.
“Ironically given my job title, I have concluded that the bank’s behaviour towards me since my speech at a Financial Times conference in May has made my position, well, unsustainable,” he said. “Funny old world.”
HSBC came under pressure to investigate Mr Kirk after he gave the presentation entitled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk” at a conference.
In the address he made light of the risks of major floods and said that he had to spend his time “looking at something that’s going to happen in 20 or 30 years”.
During the 15-minute address, Mr Kirk said climate change was “not a financial risk that we need to worry about”.
“Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are always wrong,” a slide showed as part of the presentation said.
Later in the presentation, he 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.”
Mr Kirk said on Thursday that investing was “hard” and “so is saving our planet”.
This could’ve been written by Armando Iannucci himself.
Lol, a ‘global head’ isn’t a senior executive. That’s middle to upper management, and is a far cry from senior management – ie the people that report into noel Quinn. He would be detached by 2-3 layers of management , there are literally hundreds of global heads in the bank.
This guy went off on his own, and should have know better.
Shows that you can’t trust news articles to actually explain true situation, but rather their own dumb-as-fuck narrative to get the plebs rilled up.
> “Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are always wrong,” a slide showed as part of the presentation said.
They are always wrong until they are right. When apocalyptic warnings are proven right, no one will be around to acknowledge that. At the very least no one will care about their effect on ancillary systems because the fundamental structures that maintain society are being destroyed.
That’s one way to handle the financial risk associated with an existential global threat, I suppose: if it happens, no one will worry about the state of the financial system because everyone will be too busy trying to survive the collapse of human civilization.
Myopic, self-serving fool.
Dear god this guy is a pompous, self-important prick.
I’m sure that “forget about climate change risks and environmental damage caused by climate change, we need to make as much money as possible” is a commonly held belief by investment bankers etc., but putting this in a presentation and then calling activists and members of the scientific community ‘nut jobs’ is a pretty idiotic and tone deaf thing to do while representing your employer.
What HSBC is actually doing to contribute towards tackling climate change is in no way acceptable or adequate at the moment, but ridding themselves of selfish idiots who don’t consider the wider impact of investment decisions (PR, ethical, legal etc.) should be a pretty obvious step!
His talk was about the financial risks of global warming, not global warming itself. He made the point that the risk is lower than most predict, largely because of our resilience.
If people want to argue about financial risk then fine, but he definitely acknowledged the reality of global change. He shouldn’t have been cancelled for this. He is a banker and his job is to literally think about financial risk.
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Headline doesn’t really make it clear, but he is the nut job that denies climate change.
“Ironically given my job title, I have concluded that the bank’s behaviour towards me since my speech at a Financial Times conference in May has made my position, well, unsustainable,” he said. “Funny old world.”
HSBC came under pressure to investigate Mr Kirk after he gave the presentation entitled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk” at a conference.
In the address he made light of the risks of major floods and said that he had to spend his time “looking at something that’s going to happen in 20 or 30 years”.
During the 15-minute address, Mr Kirk said climate change was “not a financial risk that we need to worry about”.
“Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are always wrong,” a slide showed as part of the presentation said.
Later in the presentation, he 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.”
Mr Kirk said on Thursday that investing was “hard” and “so is saving our planet”.
This could’ve been written by Armando Iannucci himself.
Lol, a ‘global head’ isn’t a senior executive. That’s middle to upper management, and is a far cry from senior management – ie the people that report into noel Quinn. He would be detached by 2-3 layers of management , there are literally hundreds of global heads in the bank.
This guy went off on his own, and should have know better.
Shows that you can’t trust news articles to actually explain true situation, but rather their own dumb-as-fuck narrative to get the plebs rilled up.
> “Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are always wrong,” a slide showed as part of the presentation said.
They are always wrong until they are right. When apocalyptic warnings are proven right, no one will be around to acknowledge that. At the very least no one will care about their effect on ancillary systems because the fundamental structures that maintain society are being destroyed.
That’s one way to handle the financial risk associated with an existential global threat, I suppose: if it happens, no one will worry about the state of the financial system because everyone will be too busy trying to survive the collapse of human civilization.
Myopic, self-serving fool.
Dear god this guy is a pompous, self-important prick.
I’m sure that “forget about climate change risks and environmental damage caused by climate change, we need to make as much money as possible” is a commonly held belief by investment bankers etc., but putting this in a presentation and then calling activists and members of the scientific community ‘nut jobs’ is a pretty idiotic and tone deaf thing to do while representing your employer.
What HSBC is actually doing to contribute towards tackling climate change is in no way acceptable or adequate at the moment, but ridding themselves of selfish idiots who don’t consider the wider impact of investment decisions (PR, ethical, legal etc.) should be a pretty obvious step!
His talk was about the financial risks of global warming, not global warming itself. He made the point that the risk is lower than most predict, largely because of our resilience.
If people want to argue about financial risk then fine, but he definitely acknowledged the reality of global change. He shouldn’t have been cancelled for this. He is a banker and his job is to literally think about financial risk.