About a decade ago, Miguel Torres planted 104
hectares of pinot noir grapes in the Spanish Pyrenees, 3,300 feet above
sea
level. It’s cold up there and not much good for grapes — at least not
these
days. But Torres, the head of one of Spain’s foremost wine families, knows that
the climate is changing.

His company’s scientists reckon that the Rioja wine
region could be unviable within 40 to 70 years, as temperatures increase
and
Europe’s wine belt moves north by up to 25 miles per decade. Other
winemakers
are talking about growing grapes as far north as Scandinavia and
southern
England.

Torres’ Pyrenees vineyards are a hedge and may
not be necessary. But if climate change redraws the map of Europe’s wine
world,
he will be prepared. And his company will be one of a very few taking
steps to
adapt to the future effects of climate change.

How companies are preparing for these changes is a
pressing topic, but when I agreed to write this piece I knew I was no
expert. I
set out to educate myself by posting open
requests on my finance blog at

Reuters, asking my eager-to-comment audience of business
wonks to
tell me stories of how big corporations are getting ready.

The idea was that my readers and other bloggers
would cheerfully provide me with examples of how companies are preparing
for
the downsides — not to mention the opportunities — of climate change. I
braced
myself for the inevitable barrage of responses; what I got was a
shocking lack
of evidence that the corporate sector is doing much of anything.

Most companies seem to focus solely on mitigating
changes to the climate: reducing carbon emissions, improving
environmental
sustainability, and striving to be an enlightened steward of the planet.
Adaptation is the opposite, more pessimistic approach: It is about
ensuring
survival in the exceedingly likely event that climate change occurs.