How to respond when a CEO’s strategy is misaligned with current market realities
In the middle of a July earnings call, Jet2 CEO Stephen Heapy told investors that the European heat wave was a “strategically unimportant blip” and that the hot weather would pass. Twelve days later, Ryanair chief…
Source: GreenBiz · October 6, 2026 at 1:32 AM · AI-assisted report
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KUALA LUMPUR, 6 OCTOBER 2026 —
In the middle of a July earnings call, Jet2 CEO Stephen Heapy told investors that the European heat wave was a “strategically unimportant blip” and that the hot weather would pass.
Market Impact
Twelve days later, Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary echoed the same sentiment, saying “one summer is not going to make any huge difference.” The two remarks illustrate a broader problem: many executives still treat climate disruption as a temporary nuisance rather than a permanent operating condition. For sustainability leaders, that misreading hurts twice—first when their investment requests are undervalued, and again when they are excluded from the rooms where strategy is made.
The misreading is not just a career issue for sustainability professionals; it is a planning problem for the business. If leaders use yesterday’s climate assumptions to decide today’s capital, supply‑chain, labour, insurance and customer strategies, they are planning from the wrong baseline.
More than half of the sustainability professionals the author speaks with say their investment requests are perceived as “fluffy” or “nice to have.” Chief sustainability officers (CSOs) are rarely listed as top executives on company websites, and fewer than ten CSOs have ever become CEO of a large company.
The way forward is not to argue for sustainability in abstract terms but to make the business case in the language executives already use: baseline, cost and competitive response. The author notes that the 1970s, when many of today’s executives grew up, were a different world. There were no personal computers, no mobile phones, no internet, and no political fighting over the environment. The Clean Air Act passed the U.S.
Senate by a vote of 73‑0. The 1970s were also cooler. In the U.K., the average summer was 13.84 °C, 1.5 °C cooler than the last ten summers and more than 2 °C cooler than the last two. Plotting each summer from 1970‑2026 against the 1961‑1990 average shows that “normal” itself is changing; the old baseline no longer exists.
The author uses the aviation sector to illustrate the point. Over one weekend in July, heat produced 580 delayed flights in Las Vegas as temperatures hit 114 °F, then 113 °F, then 112 °F. Hot air is thinner, meaning planes need more runway to take off and must carry less fuel.
In one situation, an American Airlines gate agent offered 50 passengers a $1,500 voucher for their seats; on another flight, 32 already‑seated passengers were asked to deplane so the plane could take off safely. Those costs are visible and already being counted. Other costs are hidden: real, already being paid but not connected to sustainability objectives in a way that makes executives take notice.
Clear‑air turbulence is another example. Incidents have risen by roughly 55 % over the North Atlantic since 1979. University of Reading meteorologist Mark Prosser estimates the cost to U.S. carriers at $150 million to $500 million a year from injuries, inspections, damage and delays. Airlines are not unique. Utilities face higher wholesale power costs and transmission strain during heat waves, which land on customer bills.
Manufacturers must contend with worker‑safety risks and productivity losses during extreme temperatures. Retailers and apparel companies face demand‑forecasting challenges as seasonal patterns become less predictable. The mechanism differs by industry, but the management challenge is the same: costs that once appeared occasionally have become recurring, while historical operating assumptions become less reliable guides to future performance.
The author advises sustainability leaders to find the number the company already pays and attach it to a metric the executive already tracks: on‑time performance, claims ratios, repeat‑customer revenue. The pitch should be: “This is already on the P&L, but it’s not being named and managed.” A number can be dismissed, as can a competitor’s action, but it is harder to dismiss both.
In most industries, exposure is similar across companies, but response is not. Take insurance. The same warming that creates heat‑related problems drives drought, wildfire and flooding. Those risks land on buildings and infrastructure, which means they land on insurers. The MSCI Institute’s 2026 survey of more than 50 global insurers found 88 % are concerned that physical risk could destabilise the financial system, and 96 % are worried about insurability in vulnerable regions.
In fact, U.S. insurers declined to renew 2.8 million policies in fire‑prone ZIP codes between 2020 and 2025.
Some insurers are using today’s normal to rethink their offerings. Mercury committed to write 38,000 new policies in California (explicitly including in distressed areas), and CSAA added a three‑year renewal guarantee for homeowners who earn the IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home designation. Separately, Chubb built an internal team of natural catastrophe modelers to apply a forward‑looking view of risk rather than a historical one.
In the airline industry, Emirates has stopped treating rising turbulence as bad luck. The airline is now among about 30 carriers sharing live turbulence data through the IATA Turbulence Aware programme so aircraft can route around the worst of it.
Climatologist Zeke Hausfather of Berkeley Earth puts the odds at 95 % that 2027 will become the hottest year on record, beating whatever record 2026 sets first. Some companies are waiting for this pattern to change. Others, like CSAA, Chubb and Emirates, have reset their expectations for today’s normal. The author urges readers to find the new baseline for their company and help update business expectations—and corresponding strategic actions—to match.