Corporations Slow to Act on Climate Change, Report Says While many continue to argue, along with Milton Friedman, that "the business of business is business," more and more publicly traded companies around the world have been embracing sustainability as a long-term strategic asset in the face of climate change. But not enough of them are doing so, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Carbon Disclosure Project, a British nonprofit group that gathers information for investors about the environmental policies of large companies and the environmental risks they face. The readership includes investors and investment funds worth trillions of dollars. The group's 2012 Global 500 Climate Change Report, based on responses from 379 of the world's 500 largest companies in terms of market capitalization, said that 82 percent of those responding set emission reduction targets of some sort, but that most of those targets are short-term. Some 20 percent have targets that extend beyond 2020, it said. On average, the companies' longer-term absolute targets for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions are only around 1 percent per year, the report said -- "well below the level of ambition needed" to ultimately limit the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above what it was in pre-industrial times. Some of the most interesting details in the report, however, related to problems in specific countries or industries. For instance, the total cost of the floods in Thailand last year was $15 billion to $20 billion, the report said. The automaker Daimler said the floods disrupted the automotive supply industry, and Hewlett-Packard and Dell said the flooding resulted in shortages of critical components and materials. The report offers a reminder that the weather-related catastrophes of 2011 in some ways eclipse those we have seen this year. The German insurer Allianz said that it paid out $2.2 billion in claims relating to natural catastrophes, its largest ever. The increasing risks that climate change poses for the insurance industry has long been a focus for Ceres, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that, like the Carbon Disclosure Project, aims to supply investors with information about potential environmental costs and benefits for various publicly owned companies. The president of Ceres, Mindy Lubbers, noted this year that last year's weather extremes resulted in near-record underwriting losses and many credit rating downgrades among property and casualty insurers in the United States. The Carbon Disclosure Project's report concludes: "Those companies that have an awareness of long-term climate-change risks and opportunities reflected in their business strategy will gain strategic advantage over their competitors."