Feb. 20. 2008 - Eighty-five percent of senior executives in the U.K. think that climate change is a significant business issue and more than three-quarters think it will grow in importance, according to a new KPMG survey. Yet despite this, 82% admit they still don’t have a strategy in place to respond to climate change.

Just four in ten executives claim to have a good understanding of the impact of climate change on their organization and, of these, only 17% know their organization's carbon footprint.

The problem may begin at the top. Climate change hasn’t yet made it on to the board agenda for a third of KPMG's survey respondents, and one in five say the issue is unlikely to be discussed at board level anytime soon.

Increasingly, executives are laying some of the blame at government's door, saying policy leaders aren't doing enough to educate business on how to tackle climate change. (For example, only 7% of those questioned knew that the U.K. had committed to cut 60% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.) In the last six months the number of people sharing this view jumped from 42% to 58%, according to KPMG.