While insurance is a free-market solution to weather risk, the multi-billion dollar, taxpayer-subsidized, connive-to-remove-land-from-productive use, corrupt green scam known as The Nature Conservancy is not something a free-market think tank like PERC should be advocating.
PERC’s Terry Anderson and Dino Falaschetti write in Forbes:
… Is it too farfetched to think we could purchase cat bonds for endangered species? The Nature Conservancy (TNC), for example, holds conservation easements on millions of acres for the purpose of protecting endangered species. If climate changes the habitat, TNC may be holding easements that no longer produce what it wants. By purchasing a cat bond triggered by a pre-specified habitat change, TNC could have funds useful for securing easements on land with more valuable habitat…
Read PERC’s “Does Climate Change Worry You? How About Insurance To Cover Its Consequences?.”
“Cat” bonds, as described, are gambling.
‘Unlike relief from insurance, which requires wrangling over the cause and extent of hurricane damage, cat bonds offer relief as soon as wind velocity reaches a mutually agreed upon and easily verified speed. According to WeatherFlow and RMS, the “insured is paid days after the event rather than waiting for months to settle a claim.”’
“I bet you a thousand dollars, at 50 to 1 odds, the wind will get above 75 miles an hour this year.” As gambling is illegal in my state, this is not an enforceable contract.
The use of the words “catastrophic” and “bond” seems to be a corruption of the language. As no damage is required, “catastrophic” doesn’t apply. What meaning of “bond” applies to gambling?
Selling “cat” bonds sounds like a business Al Gore would be in.
The Nature Conservancy’s goals are: (1) like all organizations, to expand; and (2) to advance the radical environmental agenda, including the elimination of private property. We must consider things the way they are, not the way they are postured.
Regardless of what you think about TNC, if its goal is to preserve endangered species habitat and if climate change is creating more risk in achieving that goal, cat bonds offer an alternative. If anything, the approach we propose should make TNC less “corrupt.”