Introduction

Estimates of the social and economic impacts of global warming indicate that it will become an increasingly salient issue for firms and governments – and for scholars who study international business–government relations – for at least the next several decades. For instance, an estimate based on a study by a team of scholars at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is that global warming is now causing approximately 160,000 deaths per year from disease, malnutrition, and malaria, mostly in developing countries (Doyle, 2003). As for economic costs, the 2003 annual report of Swiss Reinsurance (available at http://www.swissre.com/) on developments in 2002 notes that the European storms and floods in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, and other countries of that year caused damages in excess of €18 billion. Further, a forecast by Munich Reinsurance (2003) suggests that the worldwide cost of climate changes associated with global warming will be approximately $150 billion per year by 2009.

Despite the inherent uncertainties in such estimates, there is a consensus among specialists in the science and economics of global warming that the trends for these and other costs will increase for decades into the future (more in the next section about these trends). Estimates such as these, as well as continuing advances in the scientific understanding of global warming and its impacts, have put global warming on the agendas of firms and governments.