Barron's On: The Cost Of Climate Change

• This weekend's Barron's cover story examines the S&P 500 companies with the most exposure to climate risks.
• Investors are increasingly concerned about exposure to environmental issues, according to the article. 
• Other featured articles discuss low-debt, high-return stocks and the push to tax the rich.

This weekend's Barron's cover story, "Calculating the Cost of Climate Change" by Leslie P. Norton, shows how S&P 500 companies rank in their exposure to climate risks based on new data.

"We're steadily moving toward a new normal where billion-dollar disasters are a regular occurrence," says one expert quoted in the article. According to another: "Investors are asking more and more detailed questions about exposure to environmental issues, unplanned and hidden potential risks due to disruption and unpredictable weather."

Researchers looked at each company's physical sites and then assessed them for exposure to climate-change risk, including heat stress, water stress, floods, sea-level rise, hurricanes and typhoons and socioeconomic risk, as well as the vulnerability of each company's supply chains and end markets.

Among the 15 companies found to be most at risk are Merck & Co., Inc. MRK and Micron Technology, Inc. MU. On the other hand, eBay Inc EBAY and Netflix, Inc. NFLX were among the S&P 500 components found to have the least risk. Find out which other companies made the lists and why.

See also: Barron's Picks And Pans: Caterpillar, Dell, Intel And More

Also check out some of these other stories featured in this weekend's Barron's:

• Low-Debt, High-Return Stocks for Your Portfolio
• The Push to Tax the Rich
• The S&P 500 Goes Nowhere After Its Big Runup

At the time of this writing, the author had no position in the mentioned equities.

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