By the time you finish reading this sentence, one person will have fled their home because of a wildfire, a cyclone, a tornado, or other climate change-related disaster. Every second, one more “climate refugee” leaves everything they have behind searching for a safe place to stay: yet by and large, the private and financial sectors still fail to address the devastating impacts of climate change. 

Today, many businesses and investors prioritize profit over all else. Even as we protest for climate justice through Greta Thunberg’s Fridays For Future strikes, most companies don’t want to change their operations. Using fossil fuels is cheap. Sustainability is not.

The bottom line is, we can stop global warming— but the private sector has to be willing to spend. The $1 trillion climate spending total in President Biden’s newly-unveiled infrastructure plan won’t cut it. Experts from the Roosevelt Institute estimate that we’ll need to spend $1 trillion every year for at least ten years on reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone. That doesn’t begin to include the costs of wildfires like those in California and Australia in 2020, or of devastating droughts like in Cape Town in 2018, when millions ran out of drinking water.

To address these issues, we need an explosive turnaround towards sustainability and massive financial support throughout the private sector, starting now.

It’s actually not that hard a sell. 

Businesses big and small must adapt to climate change to stay afloat. Climate refugees are increasingly unable to work to keep our infrastructure running. Every business’s property is also at stake: in 2018, wildfires, hurricanes, and other destructive natural disasters severely affected almost 58% of all global cities. 

Climate change already costs the biggest companies in the world billions. In 2016, the CEO of multinational company Unilever stated that climate disasters cost his company $330 million per year. In 2019, Apple and JP Morgan Chase reported that climate change will likely cost them $1 trillion by 2024.

Funding climate solutions isn’t just necessary: it’s also profitable. The finance industry has already coined the term “impact investing,” an umbrella that includes climate spending. In 2020, impact investors profited significantly more than non-impact investors, and a record $20.9 billion was impact invested overall. But it’s far from enough— that same year, damages from climate disasters in America alone cost $95 billion— and these costs will only increase.

Solving climate change sits at the convergence of science, policy, and finance: a trifecta of collaboration that we must perfect. As Gen Z enters the workforce, it’s time to go beyond protests and become part of the solution. 

Let’s show the private sector that climate action isn’t just a necessity. It’s an opportunity.