A new breed of investor is set to turn climate change into a corporate governance issue.

What's emerging is the rise of the universal owners.

These are institutions and pension funds that have holdings across the entire economy and because their holdings encompass most sectors, markets and asset classes, their interests are largely the same as the public's, and beyond the performance of any one company or sector.

Earlier this year, a group of key institutional investors met at Saint mary's College of California to discuss this trend and the challenges ahead.

The report from that meeting, Universal ownership: exploring opportunities and challenges, identifies climate change, corporate governance, HIV/AIDS, and drug pricing as key issues for the universal owners.

Jane Ambachtsheer, who heads the Toronto-based global responsible investing unit of Mercer Investment Consulting and who was at the conference, told me in this interview that recent action against News Corp by Australian and international superannuation funds over its contentious poison pill scheme would be a precursor to similar sorts of fights over such issues as climate change, environmental health issues like toxic chemicals, and water.

Significantly, it made the state of California's lawsuit against America's biggest car makers quite timely. If Ambachtsheer is right, this could be the shape of things to come. You can read the terms of the lawsuit here.

This is also why Ceres, Yale University and Marsh, the risk and insurance services unit of Marsh & McLennan, are holding sustainable governance forums for company directors. The aim is to give them a better perspective on the financial, legal, business and investor implications of climate change.

All the signs suggest these issues are shaping up as boardroom flashpoints.