AustralianSuper is not shy about its role and responsibility in managing the escalating investment risks climate change poses to the retirement nest eggs of its 3½ million members.

Let’s make no mistake about the scale of these threats. As we head into a super El Niño summer, security leaders have raised the alarm about national security and cost-of-living risks for Australia and our region.

Meanwhile, new research from Emergency Leaders for Climate Action finds bushfires will cost Australia around $6 billion a year over the next three decades, as climate change fuels more frequent major fires.

The human and health costs are also tragic. More than 15,000 people are being hospitalised each year in Victoria alone and hundreds die annually due to heat stress. Almost 6000 Australians will die from heatwaves in the year 2100 due to global heating, according to a landmark Monash University study.

Translating all of this back to investment risks, expert modelling has found a high global warming scenario would leave super fund balances 38 per cent worse off by 2050.

The country’s biggest super fund says it approaches these growing risks and the critical transition to cleaner energy and net zero emissions in the way it invests as well as its actions as a shareholder in major companies, referred to as investment stewardship.

It’s hard to believe a super fund with such a commitment could have reinvested in Whitehaven Coal after........

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