Insurance Companies Should be Selling the Public on Climate ...

February 14, 2012

Is it embarrassing to say that there are insurance commercials that actually make me get misty eyed?

Legal Planet

At an environmental law conference last fall, I accidentally sat down for lunch with a group of insurance salesman from an adjoining insurance conference (I meant to sit with attendees from my conference). At first I thought we had almost nothing in common to talk about, but then the salesmen began to discuss how climate change and its impacts dominate the conversation at industry events. One of them sent me this chart, which is a nice visual to document the growing impact of a warming climate on our economy over the past 30 years:

(I?ve substituted a more recent and readable chart from Munich Re ? Peter)

Since these salesmen do such a good job selling the public on the need for all sorts of insurance policies, environmentalists should set them loose on arguably the most important issue facing the planet today. For further resources, Dan?s link to Evan Mills?website?is a great start, and I would be remiss in not pointing out that co-blogger Sean Hecht explored this topic in a 2007?article?with Evan in the Stanford Journal of International Law and in a 2008?law review article?for UCLA.

Dallas Observer:

In congressional testimony and elsewhere, the people who insure the insurance companies have been shoulder-to-shoulder with scientists and government agency executives explaining that the numbers add up, and they just don?t lie. The frequency of extreme and destructive weather events is going up up up. The testimony is no longer merely that man has an effect on the weather; it?s that there is no longer any weather that is ?natural? or not driven by man-made factors.

That?s something the insurance industry has to take into account. And they are. They are calculating the increase in claims that can be anticipated as a result of climate change.

Their challenges are not caused exclusively by climate change. They also are trying to make a calculation for cultures that are too dumb to understand and prepare for climate change, and will therefore continue to do things to make it worse, mainly through vulnerable construction and shoddy public works, but also by polluting. They have an informal term for it in German: Faktor K, where K is for Kultur.

Rick Perry?s jobs plan is right in there. The idea that we can get rich by ripping down the weak environmental protections we have in place now is definitely Faktor K.

I like the way the insurance thing works. It?s sort of like, ?Oh, please, yes, do get rid of your environmental agency, and go right ahead and borrow tons of money to create more flooding and cancer. But for all of your business insurance, life insurance, medical insurance and property insurance, we?re going to have to triple your rates. Possibly quadruple. Please don?t be late with the payments, and we prefer cash.?

Capitalism, in other words, works. It just doesn?t work the way some of the people who call themselves capitalists want it to work.

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Source: http://climatecrocks.com/2012/02/14/insurance-companies-should-be-selling-the-public-on-climate-change/

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