It was 8 degrees in Minneapolis on a recent January day, and out on Interstate 394, snow whipped against the windshields of drivers on their morning commutes. But inside the offices of Cargill, the food conglomerate, Greg Page, the company’s executive chairman, felt compelled to talk about global warming.
“It would be irresponsible not to contemplate it,” Mr. Page said, bundled up in a wool sport coat layered over a zip-up sweater. “I’m 63 years old, and I’ve grown up in the upper latitudes. I’ve seen too much change to presume we might not get more.”
Mr. Page is not a typical environmental activist. He says he doesn’t know — or particularly care — whether human activity causes climate change. He doesn’t give much serious thought to apocalyptic predictions of unbearably hot summers and endless storms.
But over the last nine months, he has lobbied members of Congress and urged farmers to take climate change seriously. He says that over the next 50 years, if nothing is done, crop yields in many states will most likely fall, the costs of cooling chicken farms will rise and floods will more frequently swamp the railroads that transport food in the United States. He wants American agribusiness to be ready.
Mr. Page is a member of the Risky Business Project, an unusual collection of business and policy leaders determined to prepare American companies for climate change. It’s a prestigious club, counting a former senator, five former White House cabinet members, two former mayors and two billionaires in the group. The 10 men and women who serve on the governing committee don’t agree on much. Some are Democrats, some Republicans.
Even when it comes to dealing with climate change, they have very different perspectives. Some advocate a national carbon tax, some want to mandate companies to disclose their climate risks. Mr. Page suggests that the world may be able to get by without any mandatory rules at all. Some members want to push investors to divest from fossil fuel companies. Several favor construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, while one member has spent more than $1 million lobbying to stop it. But they all do agree on one issue: Shifts in weather over the next few decades will most likely cost American companies hundreds of billions of dollars, and they have no choice but to adapt.
The committee started in June as a way to promote a study that it commissioned, “Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States.” But it has since evolved into a loose network of missionaries who publicize the report’s ominous data far and wide, in talks at the Clinton Global Initiative conference, briefings with the American Farm Bureau Federation and breakfast meetings with local chambers of commerce.
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After meeting with Mr. Page, Jon Doggett, executive vice president of the National Corn Growers Association, said he was skeptical that the report would influence farmers much. His members need near-term incentives to cut greenhouse gases — immediate cost savings, government incentives and so forth, he said.
“Are we going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today because we believe there’s an economic benefit 15 years from now? That’s way too hypothetical for a family-owned and operated business that has to make a payment this year,” Mr. Doggett said. “The banker doesn’t get paid in hypothetical dollars.”
Dale Moore, executive director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation, which lobbies in Washington on behalf of farmers and ranchers, said he agreed with Mr. Page that climate seemed to be in a “more extreme cycle” and that agribusiness would do well to develop hardier seed strains. But the group’s members remain skeptical that humans cause climate change. They are part of a consortium opposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s new proposed rule limiting coal-fired power plants.
But not all business groups feel this way. The Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce parted ways with the national Chamber of Commerce in 2011 specifically because the views of Seattle members on climate change differed so drastically with the sort of climate-denying statements the national group was making. “We were hosting clean technology conferences,” said Maud Daudon, president of the group, “and they were issuing statements that came from an entirely different place.”
Bit by bit, the Risky Business Project’s committee members hope to turn the tide, bringing Congress around to the way that a majority of Americans feels. “We’ve made progress on things like civil rights, smoking, gay marriage and other things that seemed impossible to move when businesspeople joined the silent majority,” said Mr. Cisneros. “Congress tends not to act until the broad mainstream, including business, is aboard.”
And if business feels the pain in its wallet, it will feel the heat to act, even on the coldest of days.
A version of this article appears in print on February 1, 2015, on page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Climate Bottom Line. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
