SAVE the planet, save your pension. A new report claims that environmental problems could bust pension funds by 2050.
Aled Jones of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues drew together evidence about a wide range of environmental problems, from water shortages to atmospheric pollution to climate change. They plugged these into models used to predict the values of pension funds.
Jones ran several scenarios, varying how quickly governments and industry responded to environmental problems. The results are published by the UK's Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFA). In almost all cases the value of funds began to fall before 2100. In the worst-case scenario, where governments and markets did nothing, values dropped steeply from around 2020 and fell to zero by 2050.
"Despite strong evidence that there is a risk that resource constraints could have significant economic impacts, these risks are not being factored in by many actors in the global economy," says Peter Tompkins of the IFA.
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
Have your say
Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.
Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article
Subscribe now to comment.
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
Dell Levis Fireman Ed Allegiant Air Melissa Rycroft mega millions Cyber Monday Deals 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment