As the mop up operation from the second wave of "worst floods in living memory" to hit the UK in the last month gets underway, attention is already turning to the economic cost of the inundation experienced by swathes of Yorkshire and Central England.

Recent estimates from credit ratings agency Fitch Ratings claims that the floods will cost £3bn in insurance claims alone, a whopping £1.7bn more than the average annual claims for extreme weather.

Malcolm Tarling of the Association of British Insurers is slightly more upbeat estimating the floods will cost the industry £2bn, however he accepts that it is early days and with many properties still under water claims could continue to rise.

Of course, the true financial cost will be higher still. Many smaller businesses fail to take out insurance for revenue lost as a result of extreme weather, while local councils are still assessing the damage caused to public infrastructure. Meanwhile, on a more mundane level the huge summer sales to be found on the High Street this month are a direct result of the shops trying to get rid of vast amounts of excess stock that has been clogging up their shelves as a result of the miserable summer.

So are these costs a direct result of climate change and if so will business leaders now fully accept that we must urgently mitigate and adapt to global warming or else face economic and humanitarian catastrophe?

The answer, I'm afraid, is less than clear.

Convention dictates that no singular weather event can ever be attributed to climate change. This is technically correct as climate describes a trend, while weather describes a singular event. As climate change sceptics are prone to point out we had summer floods long before we had reports of man made global warming so there is no way of ever saying one flood has been caused by human activity.

This is right and proper, but it is a convention that is on increasingly shaky ground.

As a recent Guardian column from Mark Lawson pointed out, climate change has become the unacknowledged elephant in the news studio, looming over every weather report as forecaster after forecaster refuses to draw a direct link between extreme weather events, such as the latest floods, and global warming.

However, in the meantime scientific reports keep showing that one of the effects of global warming for the UK will be an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events and in particular an increase in rainfall. This is a predicted trend, but what is a trend if not a series of events? If we continue to report on each flood with the caveat that there is no way we can link it with climate change we could soon find ourselves facing life-threatening floods on a bi-annual basis while all the time insisting each individual flood has got nothing to do with carbon emissions.

I'm not suggesting we should start making scientifically inaccurate statements by linking each and every flood with climate change (this type of bad science would only play into the hands of climate change deniers), but the fact that we are experiencing an increased frequency of such events as a result of climate change needs to be expressed more forcefully still by broadcasters, politicians and business leaders.

Growing numbers of businesses are now realising that refusing to acknowledge the reality that climate change will mean more freak events will ultimately do them few favours.

"You have to be careful about drawing a link," accepts Craig Bennett, who works at the Cambridge Programme for Industry and facilitates its Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change. "But we keep seeing [extreme weather] records broken all the time and this is consistent with the latest climate models. Many of the company's in the group would see [these floods] as an indication of what is to come."

He also argues that many of the firms signed up to the Corporate Leaders Group are painfully aware that an increase in the incidence of such floods would bring with them massive economic costs. "Companies in our group like Thames and Anglia Water can lecture you for days on the threat climate change poses to their business in the form of both water scarcity and floods," he observes.

This understanding of the very real costs of climate change is what is driving the Corporate Leaders Group to lobby government to "take bolder steps" to both adapt to the threats posed by climate change and mitigate against the situation worsening by transitioning to a low carbon economy. "There is an understanding [across the group] that no one will be immune to the impacts of climate change and that is why we are calling on the government to take bold  measures," says Bennett.

However, if some environmentally enlightened business leaders accept the recent floods as a clear illustration of the costs of climate change others appear less inclined to do so.

A spokesman for the CBI said that drawing a conclusion about the cause of the floods was "one for the meterologists", before adding that the costs of the floods would be felt more at a local level and were unlikely to "throw the economy off course".

If you listened carefully enough you could almost detect the sound of heads being collectively stuck in the sand. It is true the economy has not been thrown off course this time - although that will be no consolation to the Gloucester Chamber of Commerce - but will that be the case when, as many climate scientists predict is inevitable, winter floods coincide with a high tide and rising sea levels? Or when we start dealing with major floods on an annual or bi-annual basis?

Organisations such as the CBI are still wont to oppose environmental legislation that they feel damages the competitiveness of the UK, which is fair enough, but perhaps it is time for the government to start pointing out that we won't be particularly competitive if we have to mop water from the streets of our major cities once or twice a year.

Almost everyone now accepts that a truly massive programme of climate change adaptation and mitigation is required, but there still seems to be a reluctance amongst many to pay for it.

There is an elegant and simple solution available if the government would only take the opportunity provided by these floods to reverse its opposition to green levies and hypothecated taxation. The Climate Change Bill is still in its draft stage so why not propose a levy on carbon, or simpler still an increase to the Climate Change Levy, where all the revenue raised will be invested in developing a low carbon infrastructure and climate proofing our economy through enhanced flood and drought protection? The ever prudent Mr Brown could even keep everyone onside by cutting corporation and income tax to make the whole thing revenue neutral if he so desired.

Unfortunately, with an election looming it is not going to happen, but those bold business leaders who understand that far more needs to be done to drive the transition to a low carbon economy should be lobbying hard for a system that would ensure those that contribute the most to climate change pay the most to sort it out, while those that cut their emissions enjoy lower costs than their irresponsible rivals.

Meanwhile, businesses that oppose green taxation on the grounds of increased cost should take a quick trip down to Gloucester and get a taste of the future by helping to clean up all the left over sewage.