tcreeley
Elite Member
Climate Insurance
Climate change can have adverse impacts on climate insurance affordability and availability, potentially slowing the growth of the industry and shifting more of the burden to governments and individuals. Most forms of insurance are vulnerable, including property, liability, health, and life. Often small scale, gradual, diffuse, and indirect events are often overlooked like the following list:
Blackouts; Crop damages; Drought; Equipment breakdown; Eroded air quality; Eroded water quality; Hail; Ice Storms; Infectious diseases; Lightning; Mudslides; Sea-level rise/Coastal; Sinkholes; Subsidence; Thunderstorms; Tornados; Vehicle damages; Wildfire; and Winterstorms.
Between the 1960s and 1990s the number of natural catastrophes doubled and insured losses increased nearly seven-fold…
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Climate Change: Insurers Confirm Growing Risks, Costs-Insurance Networking News
Climate Change: Insurers Confirm Growing Risks, Costs
Stakeholders from the insurance industry met with members of the U.S. Senate to acknowledge the role global warming plays in extreme weather-related losses, and to issue a call for action.
The politics of global warming have typically involved much debate as to the role climate change plays in growing weather-related risk. Yesterday, however, at a Capital Hill a press conference on the cost of climate change, debate was not on the agenda. Pointing to a year of history-making, $1 billion-plus natural disasters, representatives of Tier 1 insurance companies took a definitive stance with members of the U.S. Senate to confirm that costs to taxpayers and businesses from extreme weather will continue to soar because of climate change.
Representatives from The Reinsurance Association of America, Swiss Re and Willis Re and Ceres, a nonprofit organization that leads a national coalition of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies to address a variety of sustainability challenges, joined Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) yesterday to discuss the growing financial impact of global warming.
“From our industry’s perspective, the footprints of climate change are around us and the trend of increasing damage to property and threat to lives is clear,” said Franklin Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America. “We need a national policy related to climate and weather.”
Property and casualty insurers in the United States experienced an estimated $44 billion in losses last year when hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes and other natural disasters were more severe, longer, more frequent and less predictable than in the past.
According to Swiss Re, the average weather-related insurance industry loss in the U.S. was about $3 billion a year in the 1980s compared to approximately $20 billion annually by the end of the past decade.
“As a member of the global insurance industry, we have witnessed the increased impact of weather-related events on our industry and around the world,” said Mark Way, head of Swiss Re's sustainability and climate change activities in the Americas. “A warming climate will only add to this trend of increasing losses, which is why action is needed now.”
remember: "it's the economy stupid..." -- now it is this....."it's global warming stupid..."
Climate change can have adverse impacts on climate insurance affordability and availability, potentially slowing the growth of the industry and shifting more of the burden to governments and individuals. Most forms of insurance are vulnerable, including property, liability, health, and life. Often small scale, gradual, diffuse, and indirect events are often overlooked like the following list:
Blackouts; Crop damages; Drought; Equipment breakdown; Eroded air quality; Eroded water quality; Hail; Ice Storms; Infectious diseases; Lightning; Mudslides; Sea-level rise/Coastal; Sinkholes; Subsidence; Thunderstorms; Tornados; Vehicle damages; Wildfire; and Winterstorms.
Between the 1960s and 1990s the number of natural catastrophes doubled and insured losses increased nearly seven-fold…
_____________________________________________________
Climate Change: Insurers Confirm Growing Risks, Costs-Insurance Networking News
Climate Change: Insurers Confirm Growing Risks, Costs
Stakeholders from the insurance industry met with members of the U.S. Senate to acknowledge the role global warming plays in extreme weather-related losses, and to issue a call for action.
The politics of global warming have typically involved much debate as to the role climate change plays in growing weather-related risk. Yesterday, however, at a Capital Hill a press conference on the cost of climate change, debate was not on the agenda. Pointing to a year of history-making, $1 billion-plus natural disasters, representatives of Tier 1 insurance companies took a definitive stance with members of the U.S. Senate to confirm that costs to taxpayers and businesses from extreme weather will continue to soar because of climate change.
Representatives from The Reinsurance Association of America, Swiss Re and Willis Re and Ceres, a nonprofit organization that leads a national coalition of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies to address a variety of sustainability challenges, joined Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) yesterday to discuss the growing financial impact of global warming.
“From our industry’s perspective, the footprints of climate change are around us and the trend of increasing damage to property and threat to lives is clear,” said Franklin Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Association of America. “We need a national policy related to climate and weather.”
Property and casualty insurers in the United States experienced an estimated $44 billion in losses last year when hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes and other natural disasters were more severe, longer, more frequent and less predictable than in the past.
According to Swiss Re, the average weather-related insurance industry loss in the U.S. was about $3 billion a year in the 1980s compared to approximately $20 billion annually by the end of the past decade.
“As a member of the global insurance industry, we have witnessed the increased impact of weather-related events on our industry and around the world,” said Mark Way, head of Swiss Re's sustainability and climate change activities in the Americas. “A warming climate will only add to this trend of increasing losses, which is why action is needed now.”
remember: "it's the economy stupid..." -- now it is this....."it's global warming stupid..."
