In his office in Munich, Eberhard Faust has been carefully collating data on the surface temperature of the sea in the North Atlantic. Faust is head of climate risks in the geo risks research group at the world's largest reinsurer, Munich Re, and he fears that conditions in this region of the sea–the birthplace for most of the hurricanes that strike the U.S.–are changing in a way that will make severe storms more frequent in the years ahead.

Across that ocean, in Cincinnati, Jim Stowell couldn't help but notice that in a recent photograph of Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro, the mountain's famous cap of pristine white snow had shrunk to a dirty speck. To Stowell, a vice president for federal affairs, environmental strategy and sustainability at Cinergy Corp., one of the largest U.S. electric utilities, that meant one thing: Sooner or later, the melting snows of Kilimanjaro are going to translate into new emissions regulations for his employer.

Meanwhile, in Paris, Jean-Noel Guye has been tracking the spread of mosquitoes. Guye is director of emerging risks and sustainable development at AXA, one of the world's largest property and casualty insurers. He talks regularly to health officials in the South of France, who confirm that, because of the increasingly warmer and more humid clime, the malaria-carrying anopheles gambiae has returned to the countryside around Bordeaux, after an absence of over 50 years. Guye is worried that the reappearance of these parasitic insects will alter the company's exposure to life and health claims.