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The global climate crisis will fundamentally reshape organisations and management. It will bring in new career paths, even new subject choices at university, and change the structure of organisations and the way they are run. It's early days, and no one in the world knows its final impact, but there are already signs of the ground shifting. It will force businesses and managers to live with uncertainty, a world shaped by forces still emerging.

Several weeks ago, I wrote that the job of the future will be the chief carbon officer, or CCO. That's because global warming is no longer an environmental issue. The person with this job will handle everything from working the emissions trading scheme, to hedging growth to ensure the company can offset increased greenhouse gas emissions, assessing the impact of carbon liabilities and credits on balance sheets, checking the legal ramifications of climate change, conducting due diligence on trading partners and suppliers, and handling the tax and insurance issues.

Already we are seeing organisations setting up such positions as director of sustainability strategy. Those jobs did not exist two years ago. This is just the beginning. The new CCO position might well have an impact on organisational structure and systems. It will need people, resources and infrastructure.

It is also likely to mean changes in lines of reporting. Boards will have to be on top of the issue, not only because of the impact on balance sheets and strategy, but also because some lawyers warn that there could be future litigation in Australia, including shareholder class actions under the Corporations Act, Trade Practices Act and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act. That means managers will need reporting systems that ensure information gets to the board quickly. The CCO will have to work closely with the chief executive, chief financial officer, general counsel and chief risk officer for that to happen.

This change will bring new skills into organisations. At this stage, few people are qualified for the CCO job. Expect to see a change in subject choices at university as more people go for this job. At the moment, the standard choice seems to be around areas such as commerce/law and arts/law. In the future, aspiring CCOs will be combining finance and sciences. More people will do engineering and finance, and science and commerce-type degrees.

There are two major drivers of the change: legislation, and market forces coming from customers, investors and reputation. Penny Wong's green paper on Australia's carbon reduction scheme is a taste of the extra compliance to be foisted on business. It foreshadows a reporting scheme built on the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act introduced by the Howard government last year, the first step down the road to an emissions trading scheme (ETS). Businesses in high-emitting industries will be required to monitor emissions and keep appropriate records. But while the carbon reduction plan applies to companies in high-emitting industries, every business will be affected by a price on carbon.

Critics say the green paper is short on detail. But it is a taste of things to come under the new ETS arrangements with the paper suggesting we should expect more changes as Government and business allow for carbon trading on balance sheets.

"Where practical the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System will be used as the basis for monitoring," the green paper says. "However, in some areas, NGERS will need to be strengthened to support the special financial importance attached to emissions reported under the scheme."

Wal-Mart has spotted the gap in the market and has moved to exploit it by introducing a sustainable packaging scorecard for its more than 60,000 suppliers. The scorecard has suppliers rating themselves on such areas as product/packaging ratio, greenhouse gas emissions, recycled content, transportation, renewable energy and innovation. From February, the world's biggest retailer started using the scorecard to grade suppliers and make buying decisions. Wal-Mart plans to reduce its overall packaging by 5% by 2013. Similarly in Britain, Coca-Cola, Cadbury Schweppes, Kimberly-Clark, Tesco and Scottish & Newcastle are working with the Carbon Trust to have carbon reduction labels showing greenhouse gases used in a product's manufacture, distribution, use and disposal. All these companies have identified a competitive advantage and we can expect more Wal-Mart-type scorecards. That in turn will put pressure on smaller companies to overhaul their management and processes.

The lack of detail in Wong's green paper suggests we are in uncharted waters. There aren't even firm standards for the accounting treatment of emissions-related assets and liabilities and the International Accounting Standards Board is still looking into it.

It won't be easy: carbon emissions are hard to value because the value depends on supply and demand in various jurisdictions. We are not yet at a stage where there is an externally determined value across the world for emissions reductions.

Therein lies the real problem. The biggest challenge for business and managers is the uncertainty of the new climate.

lgettler@tpg.com.au