2026 looks likely to be the warmest year ever. Oceans are charged with energy to drive ever larger storm systems. Wildfires and droughts are ravaging the land. What if this is only the beginning? What if the climate is about to stage a chaotic breakout? Just how resilient will humanity be to a war with an implacable enemy that will give no quarter? What might it mean for the economy?

While global markets are fixated on the Gulf, cast a weather eye on the Eastern Pacific where a Super El Nino climate event is developing. It could lead to Climate Whiplash events in terms of flood, storms and drought, food inflation and increasing migration tensions. It never rains, but it pours – and that’s not necessarily good for the most important commodity on the planet: Water!

A heatwave in London is unbearable – and we’re about to experience the third of this long, hot, summer. Elsewhere, increasingly chaotic climate events are triggering unpredictable weather disasters – including the tragic floods that hit Texas. We can’t deny the threat – but we can mitigate the effects if we acknowledge the threat is real, and invest accordingly.

100 days of Trump has distracted us from many big issues – including how his policies have knocked back climate science by decades. Former UK premier Tony Blair has identified massive failures in climate-change and net-zero policies. It’s time to consider how extreme weather will do even more economic damage than trade wars.

This morning’s Guest Post is from Adrian Jones, who argues there are clues in the fate of Henry VIII’s fixer Thomas Cromwell as to Elon Musk’s possible future. Society swirls around themes and narratives, and being caught on the wrong side of them as they chop and change can be fatal! Let’s not lose our heads over complex issues like Climate Change and Vaccinations, but understand them and the power of consensus…  

This morning the wind is blowing again in the UK. In Baku they are preparing for the gabfest that will be COP29. In Florida, Trump is getting ready to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. As the planet experiences its warmest year on record, and chaotic climate events multiply – where do we go from here in climate finance?

The weekend weather and more rain on the way may be a precursor to real economic consequences approaching. The sustained rise in mean adjusted P/E ratios is likely a factor of distortion – will the market notice? And the UK election. Yawn... What will Rishi say next?

Assets Managers have gone quiet on ESG and Sustainability, under pressure from sceptical money and investors bored by climate change. That doesn’t mean the problem has gone away. The risks and the consequences for markets and prices remain enormous.

The widening gulf in the outlook for the US and UK economies is stark. UK housing and the mortgage markets are a rising threat – but maybe we are looking at the all the wrong things as the Climate Crisis (oh, yes, remember that) comes back into focus.

The UK announced a new energy strategy – but its nonsense. It’s not a transition plan, but a ploy to placate the courts. We need better if the UK is take advantage of the opportunity Climate Change and Renewable Energy represents.