 Thank you so much for joining today's webinar with SoCAP Global and Commonwealth on feeling the heat, climate change, impact on worker financial security. We also hope you can join us at the SoCAP community and the SoCAP community for our flagship event in person this October the 23rd through the 25th in San Francisco, California. To this webinar you will receive a discount code to attend SoCAP. Register at SoCAPglobal.com. Before we get started I would like to share a few quick housekeeping items. You can share your questions for the panel throughout the webinar in the Q&A panel on your screen and we'll get to as many of those as we can towards the end of the discussion. If you're tweeting or exing for that matter during the webinar please tag build Commonwealth and also tag SoCAP markets as you see on the slide. And please follow Commonwealth and SoCAP Global on LinkedIn. This webinar will also be recorded. We will follow up by email with a copy of the recording. Now let's get into today's discussion. We are pleased to bring together this group of experts today to further discuss an area of climate change impact that has not been widely examined. The short and the long term effects of extreme and unusual weather on worker financial security. These effects are significant and they will continue to grow without intervention. In 2021, for example, employers lost more than 2.5 billion hours of labor across agriculture, construction, manufacturing and service sectors due to heat exposure. A 2020 report indicated that the US loses an average of 100 billion a year due to the heat induced declines in labor productivity. Given this, the nonprofit Commonwealth has embarked on a new era of work, the impact of climate change on worker financial security. This builds on over two decades of work that Commonwealth has done in the realm of worker financial security, including developing workplace emergency savings programs as part of BlackRock's Emergency Savings Initiative. SoCAP Global convenes the largest and the most diverse community in impact through live and digital experiences that educate, spar conversation and inspire investing in positive social and environmental impact. We are excited to host this webinar today where our panelists will discuss the impact of climate change on workers' short and long term financial well-being as well as the underlying impact on business. This discussion will build on a report released just today by the Commonwealth that indicates that workers are indeed feeling the effects of climate change on their household budget. Changes to their work, their living conditions, education and more. You'll have the opportunity to download the report at the end of our webinar. Now, I'd like to hand it over to the Commonwealth co-founder and executive director, Team Flacker, to share a bit more about today's discussion and panelists. Over to you, Tim. Chris, thank you so much for that setup and introduction. Good afternoon, everyone. As mentioned, I am Tim Flacker and I have the privilege of leading Commonwealth. We are a national nonprofit building financial security and opportunity for people living on low and moderate incomes, and we do that work through innovation and partnerships across sectors. We work with a wide range of leading organizations, including employers, financial service firms, fintechs, retirement record keepers, payroll providers, policy makers and more. Throughout the conversation, we will be referring to the report that Chris just mentioned. This is a new report from our team that we are just releasing today, and it speaks to the impact of climate change on worker financial security. As noted, you can download the report at the link displayed, well, down on the slide in front of you, maybe the one we had a moment ago, or at our website, which is build commonwealth.org. You will also receive an email with the link. So I am the pleasure of being your moderator for today's discussion, and I'm genuinely excited to convene a great group for this discussion, which we see as one of the most pressing issues for business and society. So let me introduce the panelists that are joining us today. First we have Julie Gerke. Julie is the Vice President of Philanthropy at Walmart and Walmart Foundation. Welcome Julie. We have Lilliana Diaz, Senior Director, Climate and Biodiversity at APCO Worldwide. Welcome Lillie. And we have Emily Williams, Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. A warm welcome to all of you and deep gratitude for taking time to join the conversation today. We really appreciate it. So let's turn to the topic at hand. As you know, we will focus now on the specifics, the details, and the implication of climate change for workers' financial security. Some brief introductory comments. In 2022, the U.S. experienced 18 separate climate disasters, each of which cost a billion dollars or more in damages. If anything, this tally underestimates the true cost of climate change and specifically its impact on workers. In our new study that we just mentioned, we are examining this impact of climate change on workers, on their financial security, and ultimately on the places they work. One thing that stood out in our study, there was just a stunning level of consensus. More than 80% of respondents from all across America feel that extreme and unusual weather events are becoming more common due to climate change. And it's inevitable that these events are impacting workers. Companies have become increasingly aware of the impact of climate change in the environment, but it's a new area of study to focus on the impact of climate change on workers and the implications of that impact for worker productivity, for employers' bottom lines, and for employees' household financial security. Feeling the heat, climate change's impact on financial security, our report, aims to better understand this impact of extreme and unusual weather on workers, especially living on low and moderate incomes, and in particular the impact on their financial situations. Our panelists today come from three very different sectors. We have an employer, we have an academic, and we have a consultant. And our goal is to discuss the realities of how climate change is currently and will continue to affect workers' health, well-being, and living situations, and what actions employers, policymakers, and financial institutions can take to mitigate this impact. So we're looking forward to a great discussion. I think to get us started, one thing that we often find is that we tend to think about the impact of climate change in terms of dramatic events and immediate responses. We can think about disaster response stories that we've all seen or lived, seen in the news or lived for ourselves. In reality, climate change is also having more subtle but very significant long-term impacts for employees. Think of a worker who's unable to get to work at an hourly job because of flooding and the impact it's had on transportation infrastructure, or perhaps a customer service representative who's working remotely but experiencing rolling blackouts due to heat waves and the grid failing under the tension of extreme, extreme temperature. These are the kinds of situations that we're seeing unfold for workers who are earning low and moderate incomes and it impacts their ability to get to work, to get their hours in, and basically their ability to earn a living. At the same time, impacting their employer's bottom line. Significantly, about half of workers, and the number is even higher for black and Latin workers, are already experiencing financial disruptions due to these kinds of changes. So with that context, I'd like to ask the panelists, what lens are you bringing to the conversation today and why do you find this conversation timely and important? So Emily, let's let you kick it off and we'll go to Lily and then Julie go to you. Emily. Wonderful, thanks so much. Yes, so from sort of an academic perspective, we're working on documenting sort of on a systemic scale in the United States. These very effects that you are describing, these kind of more subtle but sort of everyday climate risks and how they're impacting people financially and households and individuals specifically. And in order to do this successfully, this is a kind of project that requires a huge amount of data. And so this is the work that me and my team are currently undertaking right now. And again, the way we've kind of approached this is to think about everyday climate risk or climate change in terms of the relatively less obvious damage that can be done via specifically extreme temperatures. And so, for example, we know many studies that exist out there. They document damage of physical assets from disasters like wildfires and say hurricanes. But no work currently exists on how things like everyday extreme temperatures, everyday heat, everyday cold, how they're becoming more and more common and how they impact individuals financially and through what channels. And we think it's really important to document these perhaps more pervasive but less visible effects of climate change. And interestingly, this motivation is supported by a very recent publication by the U.S. Department of Treasury, who released a report in consultation with members of the Financial Literacy and Education Commission. And it's a report on the impact of climate change on American household finances. And and so we, you know, we're really coming at this from that from the same angle. Thanks, Emily. I appreciate that distinction between the extremes and the everyday kinds of events. Lily, over over to you. Well, team, thank you so much for inviting me to this webinar and the things extend to SoCAP as well. It is a pleasure for me to share the floor with Emily and Julie and talk about the impact of climate change on workers. Your correct, this is not a topic that is discussed frequently, but it is a rather important one because without a healthy, productive and thriving labor pool, we are not going to have economies and societies that function properly. And that is a requirement for an orderly transition towards net zero. So as you mentioned at the introduction of the webinar, I am a consultant and I provide strategic advisory and solutions to organizations that seek to address climate change and to navigate the transition to a net zero economy, which is quite a challenge. My job at APCO is to assist clients in understanding and charting a path towards net zero. And many at times this translates into helping organizations identified and understand not only the risks that they face, but also the opportunities that may arise from their decarbonization efforts. And people sometimes only look at one side of the question risk, but not opportunities. And there are opportunities in decarbonization. Corporations can gain efficiencies from switching to cleaner energy sources, which are expected to calm down in costs. So that will make the process more efficient and less costly for the organization. So there are a lot of opportunities. But in truth, a lot of the work that I do actually revolves around thinking and speaking of risk. Much of my team's work revolves around developing materiality assessments to identify the potential impact of physical and transitional risks that the organization faces. And to get us to the same level of understanding, I should quickly explain what I mean by physical and transitional climate risks and how they impact the organization and the workforce. So transitional risks are the risks associated with transitioning to a lower carbon economy structure, which may entail policy, legal technology and market changes that result from our efforts as a society to address climate change. For example, if there may be potential reputational risks for corporations arising from the changing perspectives of stakeholders around the organization's action towards net zero. In a nutshell, if the organization is not perceived as being an active participant and tackling the climate crisis, it may have a hard time attracting and retaining talent, which in turn negatively affects its ability to manage the workforce and to plan production processes. And therefore, down the line, it affects its ability to generate revenue, profit and value for the shareholders. So very, very poignant on the issue of risk. On the other side of the equation, we have the risk associated with the physical impacts of climate change. And here you can think of the sustained higher temperatures or changing precipitation patterns that, for example, may cause chronic heat waves in the future. And how this actually translates into a materiality assessment of risk. Well, if there is sustained heat stress expected in a specific geography and the majority of the operations of an organization are located within that geography, the firm workforce may be expected to sustained induced health related issues because of the heat exposure. And this, of course, translates into increased losses in worker productivity higher energy costs because the corporation requires increased increased cooling needs in the in the factory or the places where the workers are located. And ultimately, it may lead the organization to rethink where operations could be based and that could be create a lot of friction for the labor pool and for workers, these type of episodes, acute episodes of heat and stress may be resolved by being absent from work. That may be the only option. And this, of course, has a connotation and repercussions for their ability to earn wages and their livelihood. So as you see, charting a path towards net zero requires a comprehensive understanding of the risks that arise from climate change impacts and how they interconnect and how they affect not only the ability of the organization to respond to these risks, but how those impacts affect the labor pools. Julie. I would just echo my colleagues and say, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to learning alongside them. As Walmart, we come to this. We've been working on both preventing the worst impacts of climate change through reduced reduced dimensions and commitments to zero emissions, but also on community resiliency and disaster relief for years. You know, the the both small and large disasters you mentioned are actually happening in our operations every day. We serve thousands of communities, even if you just isolate it to the US. We 90 percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart. So that means these community disasters, whether they're a blooded road, a water shortage or a hurricane, are part of something our customers and associates are facing. And so being able to address that and think about it, prepare, make sure that we have the systems to efficiently and effectively respond is actually a really essential part of our core business resiliency. And so we have, you know, a model and an emergency operations team who often we talk about most in hurricanes and really large scale disasters. But every day, they're operational and they're cross functional. We follow a structure of thinking this through as a group. And first and foremost is thinking about the health and well being of our associates. That is our first priority. It is always the first topic of conversation as we gather. What is the state of the employee base? Are they healthy? Are they safe? Who are we in contact with? How are we supporting them? It then goes to our operations and our customers, because when you think about it, having a Walmart open is access to affordable, healthy food, prescriptions, these kinds of things that build community resiliency and after a disaster are incredibly important. They relieve stress on our emergency relief nonprofit partners because those who can get help through the market do. And that's really essential. We also hear from many people that after a disaster, it feels like things are going to be OK when Walmart is open. There's a sense of normalcy that comes and the mental health impacts of disaster are real. And then third, how do we support communities? We engage with local government, state governments, national government, governments, NGOs in really community level planning and response to make sure that we're supporting because we think that individual level financial resilience is tied to community resilience. Thank you, Julie. Well, I hope everybody can see we have a super, super group. So, Emily, let's turn to you and get this started. It's our observation that that's setting the impacts of climate change and extreme weather on household finances, family finances has not been done a lot, but we know from our new research that it really is on the minds of workers. Two data points to share quickly. Fifty four percent of the workers we surveyed who are earning low and moderate incomes told us that their financial situation has been impacted from extreme or unusual weather events, right? So that's more than half. And twenty eight percent reported losing their financial stability all together. So with those data points in mind, can you tell us why you and your team at Harvard decided to focus on household financial security, especially for households living on low and moderate incomes when it comes to climate change? What led you to this? You know, we again, as I mentioned before, we we we think of this, you know, we're studying sort of extreme temperatures specifically. So really hot heat waves or cold or cold, cold weather, cold snaps. And we're trying to understand how this this type of climate change is impacting household financial financial security. And we think it's really important because it's a little bit harder to kind of measure these impacts, given that we don't have sort of this physical asset damage and this is sort of a pervasive and relatively subtle and difficult to kind of pinpoint and measure. And so it hasn't been done before and especially not on a systematic scale. And so, you know, we we decided that we really wanted to tackle this. And in order to do that, we had to undertake a huge, huge data exercise where we're really making use of a number of absolutely massive data sets. So the first is looking at very, very local daily temperatures across the entire United States. And you can imagine how big that data set is at a very, very fine grid size. And then we also have credit card and bank account transactions data for millions of individuals in the United States. And that allows us to trace out these sort of financial impacts of of things like everyday climate change or extreme temperatures specifically. And so, yeah, we we thought, you know, we're we've got this data with a perfect group to do it and it hasn't been done on a systematic scale. And we have all of the resources to be able to do that. And so that's exactly why we're tackling it. And it, you know, is very much in line with sort of again, the motivation by policymakers right now. I just mentioned that Treasury report, which is very, very important. And again, all this anecdotal evidence and this sort of smaller scale survey evidence that we're hearing about that there are these impacts, people do feel this effect on their own financial security and and different. And there's this, it seems like there's a huge amount of heterogeneity and different groups that are potentially more at risk than others. And so that's exactly why we're we're tackling this with our incredibly rich data, because we we're kind of well positioned to to really get into that heterogeneity and the different populations of groups. That's fabulous. And I think we'll have some time later to hear how it's going. But Lily, let's turn to you. You already mentioned in your into your introduction, that's zero. And that makes that makes a ton of sense. I think there's, I would say, a lot of focus in the corporate world around that zero when the conversation turns to climate. But it's rarely in our observation, a discussion about human capital, which is, of course, our focus today. So it would be helpful if you can say, and you've spoken to this a bit, but share what where you see climate events impacting workers. And in conjunction, what's the ripple impact for the employer? And I guess maybe at a macro level, where should workers and their financial welfare fit into companies net zero strategies? Well, Tim, thanks for the question. As we experience more and more the physical impacts of climate change, I think we are gaining tremendous empirical evidence of how they are actually impacting organizations and workers. So, for example, rising temperatures due to climate change are amplifying health and economic hazards for workers that is well established. Elevated temperatures during work, typically exceeding 95 degrees, post threats to occupational health, diminished work capabilities. And importantly, they undermine labor productivity. The simple truth is that productivity falls as temperature increases. According to some publicly available estimates, when the thermometer hits 90 degrees Fahrenheit, productivity slumps by 25 percent. That's a huge chunk. And it gets even worse when the temperature passes 100 degrees because productivity is expected to drop by 70 percent. People cannot function under heat stress. And, of course, these losses in productivity come at a cost and you can think of them at the macro level, the inability of an economy to produce value. A measure in losses in GDP. But you can also think about it in the micro level, how these losses in productivity affect the bottom line for organizations. And this is significant, just to give you an example. According to the International Labor Organization, global warming is expected to result in an increasing work-related heat stresses, causing productivity losses that may equal 80 million full-time jobs globally or the equivalent of economic losses to the point of 2.4 trillion dollars by 2030. And in the introduction to the webinar and a study around developed by the Atlantic Council and performed by my former employer, concluded that for the US economy, losses of labor as a result of heat exposure cost the economy about 100 billion per year. And these losses are expected to increase even more as climate change worsens, doubling to 200 billion by 2030. And they could possibly reach 500 billion by 2050. So this is a very significant issue. In helping organizations chart a path towards net zero, my team and I are very cognizant that the focus of the conversation is always on the cost that both the climate impacts represent, as well as the cost that the carbonization may entail for a corporation. So it is always it is true that the majority of the analysis centers a lot on the financial implications and ultimately how it affects the bottom line of an organization. And therefore the conversation does not start with a focus on human capital. And I should say that this is because the conversation around climate action at the corporate level resulted from concerns from the investor community. Investors were very worried about the impact of climate change on long term value assets and investments. And this is why the focus perhaps the first focus is on the financial implication. However, the good news is that the analytical frameworks and the guidelines that we have to understand the impacts of climate change and the climate risk were devised with a very holistic and comprehensive and long term view of these risks and to plan for the various scenarios that may materialize in the future. Climate change is an uncertain phenomenon. And so we need to use scenarios to plan for the future. In this scenario planning exercises that we run understanding how climate risks impact human capital is gaining traction because we have come to the understanding that a successful transition needs to be a just transition. And in a nutshell, there is a growing consensus that the carbonization that the carbonizing economic structures and energy systems is going to create friction for the labor pool. And those impacts need to be accounted for and plan for when we are thinking about net zero and strategies from at the corporate level. And equally important in this conversation is that climate impacts affect workers, but workers are not just workers. They are not a category. They are consumers. They are minority, minority owners, and they are also members of the community at large. So if organizations thinking about a climate strategy have a very narrow field of view, they will lose on the opportunity to think about how they can contribute to creating functional societies. And so my take away of this conversation is that it is important for net zero strategies to take into account the actions required to help the workforce deal with impacts of climate. Thanks, Lillian. Every time you're saying lost productivity and thinking about that in the aggregate, I'm also thinking on the other side of that as an individual worker whose lost productivity means they're not taking home a paycheck, so really helpful. So let's go from the conceptual to the particular. Lillian, obviously, I shouldn't say obviously, I know that Walmart is one of the largest employers in the world, I think, and certainly in the U.S. Can you just share a little bit about Walmart's approach to helping workers when climate events and extreme weather happens? And in particular, I know there's something to share about the impact that Katrina had at Walmart. Sir, thanks, Tim. You're right. Katrina is a really pivotal part of Walmart's history and narrative in this space. It is a moment where we had been involved in disaster response and relief before Katrina and mainly in charitable ways. But in Katrina, what we really learned is our strengths and assets as a company could be part of the solution. And so there was a CEO led effort to say, do the right thing for the community in New Orleans and our associates. And incredibly creative ideas came out from leaders who have the authority to make local leaders to make the right decisions to support the community. So much so that, you know, if you walk into our home office, the only kind of large scale artistic rendering in the lobby is one of Walmart trucks that without knowing the background, it's actually an artistic rendering of the trucks that were the first trucks into New Orleans with relief supplies before the government or others to remind us what we learned and how we use our assets really to solve social and environmental problems in a way that makes us a stronger business. So, you know, that is years of learning across this, but I thought I'd take us into, you know, I talked early about employees, customers and operations and communities. I thought I'd just take us into how the employee piece works and what we're doing in that space. So as I shared, our emergency operations team is a cross functional team that is activated, often in large scale disasters, both before and during. We all come to one room to coordinate, to walk across tables and be able to quickly make decisions. And in the employee work, it starts before the disaster hits in really thoughtful, good information to associates who are in the path of disaster about how they can prepare and what's the best fact based ways that they can take preventative action to protect themselves, their families and be most resilient to it. If it is a time of evacuation or those kinds of things, we do provide financial assistance knowing that that adds cost to a family. And so we have pretty immediate you're in the path of disaster. It's been recommended you evacuate this region. Here is cash to really support the kinds of expenses that that may entail. And that's all prior to disaster coming. Once it hits, the first thing we do is activate health and safety talk calls. So we are literally getting in touch with every single employee in the region. For instance, it was 13,000 associates after Hurricane Ian last year. We're doing that with, you know, that starts as soon as phone lines and text chains are up. And until we have affirmative confirmation of everybody's safety, the team doesn't stop. It then comes into, you know, we do have a disaster pay program. So if your store is closed and you're unable to work, we have a pay program to continue your pay through that time. It's a large scale disaster. We often set up a resource center for associates where they can come and get mental health support, assistance applying for FEMA. If they've had major disaster, really a wrap around service center that's central where we can provide additional assistance. And we have a program where if you've evacuated and you for some reason can't come home, you can actually work in the store where you're living. So, you know, imagine you've evacuated from New Orleans. You're staying in Baton Rouge with family. If you want to pick up hours in the stores in Baton Rouge, we have a program that allows for that. So that's all kind of in the immediate aftermath. But we know many associates have much more acute issues. They lost a car. They have housing damage, a number of things. And we have an employee assistance fund that provides financial grants to help in that case. And really is to supplement the kind of assistance they can get from insurance and FEMA. So we're learning we, you know, every every disaster or learning where we have gaps still, where it's working, how it can work better. But those are the programs that we are coordinating kind of each day to make sure that associates come back strong and really don't feel the long term mitigate the long term impacts they might feel. Really, thanks. I just what I hear in your response that I just think is so important and interesting is that obviously my words, not yours, but, you know, thinking about your business, thinking about how you show up in the community and thinking about your workforce are all of a piece. You can't really do one without the other. And and I love the idea. I love that. That's an odd turn of phrase. But the idea that you are thinking ahead and anticipating the weather events coming, I assume that's because you've learned that you have so much at stake in all of those levels that it warrants that kind of advanced planning. So thank you for sharing that. Emily, I want to I want to go back to you. We just heard from Julie how, you know, extreme weather events have actually played a really significant role in the evolution of Walmart's thinking, you know, looking at the Katrina example and from Lily about the long term impact on productivity. And you introduced this phrase that has stuck in my brain a little bit about the everyday climate change events. And I just wanted you to give us another chance, give you another chance to help make that real for us, what that looks like in in your, you know, your research subjects lives and what you're starting to find there. Yes, absolutely. And it's, you know, truly fascinating to to hear all these different perspectives and to hear from Julie, sort of how Walmart responds for these, you know, these these broader sort of environmental disasters. And so, yeah, what we're what we're trying to do, just as just as you've described, just as I've described, is we're trying to understand how does this everyday climate change, these everyday sort of extreme temperatures, how how is this impacting really the income statement of the household, rather than the balance sheet per se and and exactly sort of as as Julie, many, many of the things that she brought up where we're sort of looking into these things. So in our very early analysis so far, we are finding significant heterogeneity and effects across different subgroups of the population. So for example, we're finding for the lower income segment of the population of the United States. We see when, for example, let's let's just talk about extreme heat and specifically heat and humidity combined together. So the kind of wet bulb temperature. When we see extreme heat, we are seeing an overall sort of decline in an income. And really that's coming from sort of ad hoc income, which is the type of income that is more and more commonly earned by by these lower income groups. So we're seeing a decline in income, which is indicating to us some kind of absenteeism. And, you know, we can we're digging into that, you know, to really try to pin that down. We see an increased likelihood of the incidence of incurring sort of overdraft fees, NSF fees, so non-sufficient funds fees, which which indicates a kind of deterioration in sort of financial health. And interestingly, we see, for example, when temperatures get really high, these lower income groups, we don't see utility spending. So, for example, we don't see that really bumping up so much. So whereas for higher income people, we do. And so, for example, if you think about it, the lower income person is experiencing these extreme sort of heat and this extreme heat and humidity, they can't afford to turn on their air conditioner, or maybe they just don't have an air conditioner. Maybe the quality of their housing is so poor that they can't that it's just not worth it. And so we're not really seeing that bump up in utility spending, whereas for the higher income people, it gets really hot. I'm just going to, you know, really turn up my air conditioner and everything is going to kind of smooth out. So for the lower income person, we don't see that increase in utility spending. We do see an impact on on income, and we do see an increase in the likelihood of a deterioration and sort of financial health. And so, yeah, that's that's sort of what we're finding in very again, we're kind of early on in this study, as most of our time so far has been working on assembling these absolutely gigantic data sets. And so we're very excited to sort of dig further into the channels through which this is happening, which can hopefully, you know, inform businesses such as Walmart, for example, on sort of how to how people actually are affected just through what we think is every day sort of temperatures is just very hot today or is very cold. So, yeah. Well, thank you. I just listening to you, I was struck a couple of things. One, those of us who have the luxury of being salaried, it may not be intuitive, right, that just simply not being able to go to work, whatever the cause. You know, even if that cause really has nothing to do with the choice you made, just inevitably has an impact on your income. So perhaps an obvious statement, but one I wanted to make. And and the other thing that was going through my mind is to think that, you know, it probably never feels very good to lose part of your money to an overdraft fee or insufficient funds fee. But to imagine that being the, you know, on top of just having lived through some kind of really unfortunate weather event or even if it's of the everyday variety, I just wonder, and maybe your research will bear this out, that it has that much more impact on households. There's kind of a stacking effect, I guess, that I was was imagining. So I'm so glad that you're doing that work. Julie, I wanted to come over to you. One thing that came up as we got together to think about this call today is that Walmart is doing the things that you already talked to us about, you know, directly for and with your own associates and related to your business. But Walmart.org, which I assume is really the philanthropy is thinking about how you all show up, in my words, as corporate citizen and thinking about the systems around, you know, the business and the systems around the communities that you operate in. And it just would love to hear your thoughts and what you all have learned about how we should think about a sort of systems change lens to climate events and the impact on workers finances. Sure. I think the stacking effect that you were just talked about really struck me, because when you think about that, it is disproportionately in areas that have that have this effect so often. And we see this in our base in the Gulf or those kinds of places that regularly are impacted by climate impacts and are already really at the forefront of this. And so, you know, we think about the system in a couple of ways. So first and foremost, picking up on what Liliana has been talking about, we need to do our everything we can to reduce the impact of climate change and prevent the worst impacts by reducing our admissions, by working with our suppliers to help theirs, they reduce their admissions. We have over 5,000 suppliers that participate with us in a project called Project Gagaton to reduce a gigaton of admissions from the supply chain. We have our own commitment to zero admissions by 2040. So that's really important work because as much as we can prevent, we should. Then the second piece is the reality of communities are feeling this. So in 2022, we made a commit over three million dollar commitment along the Gulf to a series of organizations saying, what would it look like to work together to build regional resiliency? That includes everybody from the nature conservative conservancy, who's building out wetlands so that the impact is less severe to working with Tulane University, who has a series of grantees, including a mental health practice led by African American women to serve African American women who are experiencing PTSD from losing their home multiple times to to hurricanes. And so really thinking about how do they come together? What are the services coordination that is needed to build community level resiliency? I'm really excited for those tracking. FEMA has announced community resiliency zones, which are zip codes that are disproportionately black and brown, low income zip codes around the country where they are providing incentives to invest in community resiliency of this nature because they perceive that there's going to be disproportionate impact to the communities there and we're investing alongside them in making sure those are really successful because planning and community level work helps really communities bounce back faster and everybody have a better outcome. And then finally, we are we will continue to invest in the capability and strengthening the disaster relief system. So that is everything from having showers and laundry and connectivity and food in Walmart parking lots post disaster. Alongside nonprofit partners, it is also an air conditioned space. If you've lost heat and air conditioning, those kinds of things, it's a space that can provide comfort. But it's also things like we've invested in the Bipart bipartisan policy center where they are bringing together a diverse background of emergency response officials who have worked at all levels of government to really reenvision the future of what FEMA and other levels of response need to look like for this reality. And so we think it's all of the above that we're going to need. It's people leading on individual support. It is thinking about community level resiliency. It is supporting the redesign of relief programs. And it's really that whole system that will lead to people having better short and long term outcomes. That seems just really sensible. I appreciate hearing that from you, Julie. And my own opinion is that being thoughtful about what pieces of the work belong, if we can use that word, with what different institutions and systems is really, really critical. And it's one reason why we think there's a natural connection between worker level financial outcomes, not exclusively in their employer, but that is a place where we see it being sensible. And I guess my interpretation of things that Walmart is already doing would be that you all, you know, in some level come to that same conclusion. Lily, I just, you know, given that we've heard from Julie the many ways that Walmart is thinking ahead, it makes me think about this question of sort of when and I guess when and how corporate leaders should be thinking about the financial implications of climate change for their workers. I just wanted to give you a minute if you have anything you wanted to weigh in on that question. Yeah, well, my two cents are that in thinking about climate change and its impacts, corporate leaders do really have an opportunity to move ahead not only with some decarbonization strategies, but they have an opportunity to think holistically about their climate action and how can they use it to create enduring share value for employees and the community at large. And to do so, they have to be cognizant of the impacts of climate change in their workforce and not only about disaster, but this chronic everyday impacts that Emily talked about. That makes sense. Thank you. All right, I wanna close and give everybody one last chance to weigh in here and I'm gonna set you up by sharing one finding from our report, which was that nearly half of workers, 46% told us that if an extreme weather event, an usual weather event were to impact them tomorrow, they are not confident in their ability to recover financially. And that can kind of sound dry when I say it, but if you really sit with that, just sort of feel what that's like for almost half of folks to say, you know, if this happened to me, what I just saw in the paper, what I heard about what happened to a family member in a different part of the country, perhaps if that happened to me, I'm not confident that I could recover. So I think that's a really startling finding. And I guess what I'd love to hear is when we think about this question of roles and what can different stakeholders, different parties, whether you think about individual employers or employers collectively or researchers or social sector leaders, policymakers, what can they do so that if we were to go back out a year or two years or three years from now and ask that same question, we wouldn't have nearly half saying this could really be disastrous to me. What should we be looking for different parties? What action should they take? What's on your wish list? Let's see, I don't think we, no, I guess Julie, we're gonna let you take that one first. I wish I had a magic wand. I do think each party or sector needs to think about what their strength is and lead from that. And that's a really, it's not only the most obvious things, which for us it's keeping stores open, taking care of our associates, but it is then thinking about how you bring those strengths to the system at large and really see this ability for the work you do to intertwine with others and really build a community level resiliency that will support us all. Fantastic. Emily, let's go to you next. So I think sort of very similar to what Julie was already telling us Walmart do. I think many people in the United States are living under sort of financially fragile circumstances just generally. So sort of living as we say in the academic literature hand to mouth where they're basically consuming or spending basically all of their income on a month to month basis. And that gives them very little buffer in order to withstand these shocks. And so that is very consistent with the types of things that you're telling us about your study and how many people feel unable to sort of manage these climate shocks that might end up in sort of cause them financial harm. And so I think one thing is that we can, as academics, we can get this research out and we can document these effects of everyday climate change so that employers can be aware that for example, many people who are lower income might specifically because of historical reasons live in poorer quality houses in areas that are more affected by extreme temperatures and their health might just be more affected by extreme hot or cold. And this might need to absenteeism and we need to kind of have an understanding that if someone calls in sick because they kind of got heat stroke then it's the same type of thing as someone calling in sick because they had the flu. When you need as employers, I think we need employers to be aware of the effect that the sort of everyday climate change is gonna have on people and especially their ability to work and earn that income, which is so vital for these people who are lower income in our society. Thank you Emily and Liliana, last word to you. So I would like to, and then on another that is positive and I do believe that I work with a lot of corporate clients and what I always advise them on is being proactive rather than reactive and being proactive in this instance means thinking strategically about the changes that they could implement on policies and procedures that could help them get a competitive advantage. So for example, heat waves are causing trouble and are probably heated to state. So a good strategy is to think about changing the ways that corporations educate and prepare the workforce for rising temperatures that may lead to heat stress and that requires not only adhering to current regulation but thinking creatively about what sort of procedures they could put in place to, for example, have an action plan that has a temperature alert system that has a communication strategy, like Julie spoke about their communication strategy for disasters that thinks about work protections and it's not all about the physical but also the financial dimension and also thinking about the urban planning that can help mitigate heat exposure. So thinking about how they run their operations, having the health of their employees in mind. So I think it's a positive observation and I think it's something that it's a win-win for the workers and for the corporate world. And you started us off by reminding us there are threats and opportunities here and that's what I was thinking listening to you. I know for myself that one of the challenges with climate change is it can feel overwhelming and realistically as individuals we can't solve it even as large institutions we can't solve it but on this particular issue we can take action and we have good reason from many different lenses to think about what specific steps many of which you all have identified we can take to help our workers be prepared and suffer less when the inevitable weather events happen. We are rapidly closing. I just wanna get a couple of points that I think are worth calling out both from the conversation today and from our research. The first is that there is very nearly a consensus from Americans that this is our new normal, right? We shared earlier over 80% of respondents in our research said that extreme and unusual weather events are becoming more common due to climate change. This is happening. The second thing to just repeat is that it short-term impacts whether it's missed hours of work or other kinds of things or the long-term impacts disruption to housing maybe an inability to even get insurance for housing. These things that are happening because of climate change are significantly impacting workers financial security and all indications they're going to intensify especially if we don't do something to mitigate those impacts and that businesses are already seeing the effects of these changes on their bottom lines. Whether we're talking about impacts to productivity or retention or other factors that maybe we haven't yet identified, leaving them unaddressed is only going to make things worse. So let me close with a quick call to action. This is clearly a rich and important body of work that we at Commonwealth are committed to play a part in and we know we can't do it alone. So there is a very direct call. If this interests you, even if you're not sure exactly where it fits into your work or you don't have all of the answers, even more so, reach out, there's a way to do that on screen here. We want to hear from you. We want to have the opportunity to learn from you and to work with you. So with that, I want to just thank the panel and turn it back over to Chris to take us home. Wow, wow, wow. What an electrifying conversation. To wrap up, I want to thank our moderator, Tim and our panelists, Emily, Lily and Julie. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and insights on this important topic. Thank you to all our audience members for joining. We hope you have found the conversation insightful and maybe even a bit inspiring.