Political opposition to the carbon tax may be at record highs in Australia but for insurers climate change has for many years already been an economic and business risk they have had to plan for.
“Since climate change could lead to losses on a scale never before experienced, insurers are not waiting for researchers to produce all the answers,” notes a report the US Insurance Information Institute that was published in February this year.
A report from insurer Munich Re published two months later echoed the same concerns.
“Some of the leading climate scientists conclude that global warming will result in more extreme weather events and urge strengthening disaster preparedness,” they noted in a statement issued in April.
As Roger Pielke Jr. points out here, the IPCC’s SREX says otherwise.
The insurance companies are just taking advantage of an ignorant public by using the threat of the “global warming” hobgoblin as an excuse to raise rates. Any increased loses have not been due to multi-year increased frequency or intensity of natural phenomena, but have been due, rather, to increased population and property values in areas that have always been vulnerable and will remain so (e.g., near oceans and levee-protected areas).
The insurance companies are rational entities, and are not in the habit of making unrealistic projections. To do otherwise is to invite competitors to enjoy an advantage.
This site, on the other hand, is set up for the sole purpose of obfuscating the problem and preventing effective action.
Your paranoid minds are helping with that.
I’m on the side of the insurance companies.
Harold, you accuse us of being part of some mega-enterprise conspiracy and declare yourself to be on the side of $trillion for-profit conglomerates flogging reinsurance. The irony is palpable
It is simple mathematics of risk-taking. When the stakes are going to be raised, the House has to increase the bank to cover all contingencies.
Ask any casino.
Insurance is a risk industry. You insure for the probability that in your life time some catastrophe will take your home and you will require a large sum of money to rebuild or relocate. If you are prepared to have this catastrophe and pay the price, then don’t insure. It’s simple. Insurance was never about making a profit. It is about risk or the likelihood of risk.