Jul 25, 2019

Drugmakers stand to profit from vaccines thanks to climate change

Sam Baker

A handful of drug companies with big vaccine portfolios are especially well-positioned to capitalize on the effects of climate change, according to a Morgan Stanley investors’ note.

The big picture: Climate change will be a business opportunity for some pharmaceutical companies. That’s nothing cynical — infectious diseases will spread faster and farther as the climate warms, and we treat infectious diseases with drugs.

The bottom line: Vaccine development is hard and expensive, so companies that are already in that business will have an upper hand, Morgan Stanley’s analysts wrote.

  • Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline are at the top of the heap, the bank says, given their existing pipelines and manufacturing capacity.
  • Takeda and Merck both have vaccines in the works for dengue fever, one of the diseases that climate change is likely to exacerbate.
  • Janssen and Pfizer are both active in the vaccines market, but would need to establish new research programs to take on tropical diseases, per Morgan Stanley.

Go deeper: Climate change could be big business for pharma

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Sara Fischer

TV news' climate change bias

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

While newspapers are teaming up to double down on their climate change coverage, broadcasters are focusing on covering the byproducts of climate change — natural disasters and extreme weather.

Why it matters: Climate change tends to be a ratings killer for television, because it can be abstract and complicated to explain in short, visual bites. But as the economic and political debate around the topic increases, media experts will be looking at the ways television outlets cover the issue, as television is still the most common place for Americans to get their news.

Go deeperArrowJul 27, 2019
Amy Harder, Mike Allen

Climate change's crucial moment

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Scientists for decades have warned of the time when climate change would begin to change our daily lives. We're now entering that moment.

The big picture: The Fed, corporate executives, college students, retailers and politicians are all coming to grips with this seminal challenge. We as a species are now living with this problem like never before.

Go deeperArrowJul 27, 2019
Amy Harder

Pressure grows around U.N. climate-change summit

Young people and Big Oil executives will join world leaders in September for the most high-profile summit on climate change since the 2015 UN conference that led to the Paris Agreement.

Why it matters: The New York event is aimed at encouraging countries to increase their pledges to the Paris deal, in the face of rising global carbon emissions, falling investment in renewable energy and an American president who denies there’s a problem at all.

Go deeperArrowJul 27, 2019