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Quote
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Notes"The $1-billion mark used to be exceptional, said Robert Tremblay, director of research with the Insurance Bureau of Canada. This year, however, marks the third in a row that weather-related destruction has topped or neared that level.
“Unfortunately, it has become a yearly occurrence and so now we have to wonder where it will it go from here,” Mr. Tremblay said.
The insurance bureau’s figures do not include hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid doled out by governments for natural disasters insurers won’t cover, such as flooding. Compensation claims connected to Manitoba’s unprecedented spring flooding could alone top $1-billion, significantly adding to the province’s deficit, Premier Greg Selinger said recently.
If leading international climate scientists are right, these kinds of weather extremes – storms, floods, heat waves and droughts – will become more frequent as the Earth’s temperature rises. Economic losses will continue to mount unless governments, businesses and residents better prepare for the predicted increase in natural disasters, said Glenn McGillivray, managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, an independent research institute established by the insurance industry and affiliated with the University of Western Ontario in London.
“We have to build more resilient communities,” Mr. McGillivray said. “One of the concerns that we have is the building code is based on historical weather. It’s not very helpful to build something that is supposed to last for 100 years on weather from the past.”
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This quote is drawn from the article, ‘Year’s wild weather wrecked costly havoc’, in the Globe & Mail.
(Photo credit: Environment Canada)
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Photo
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Notes
“The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change.”
“The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change.”
- Two quotes from global insurer Munich Re in their 2010 press release, ‘Large number of weather extremes as strong indication of climate change’. I found the quotes in Joe Romm’s new ClimateProgress post, ‘A New Record: 14 U.S. Billion-Dollar Disasters in 2011’.
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Link
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Notes 'Can the insurance industry survive climate change?'
From Reuters:
As catastrophic weather events continue to become more common and more severe due to climate change, the insurance industry will be sorely tested. 2010 insured losses were estimated at between $18 billion and $37 billion - and indicated “a probable link” to climate change, according to insurance giant, Munich Re. In fact, the industry has named climate change its biggest challenge.
But how will the industry respond? The most immediate response we are already seeing are soaring premiums to homeowners and businesses. One 2009 study predicted a doubling of insurance rates due to climate change - and that was before severe weather events doubled in 2010 from 2009 totals.
…
Insurance may well become unaffordable for millions in the U.S. and elsewhere in the developed world as premiums skyrocket. But the problem in the developing world is that many of the world’s most vulnerable victims of climate change are not insured at all. According to Swiss Re, another insurance giant, “the economic effects of current climate impacts can amount to between 2-12 percent of GDP annually. These impacts threaten to undermine national budgets of vulnerable countries for years to come.” They will also undermine the ability of those societies to pay for clean, sustainable development.
…
In both developed countries and emerging economies, the insurance industry can play a vital role by correctly pricing climate risks, providing quantitative estimates of risk - and, last but not least, investing in adaptation and mitigation strategies. A climate conscious insurance industry is critical to driving policies that lessen the ultimate price tag of climate change - not just the insurance costs, but the costs to economies and ecosystems as a whole.
Check out the rest of the article here. If you want to read more on the intersection of climate and insurance, take a look at Scientific American’s ‘Are Insurance Companies the New Climate Ally? and the New Zealand Herald’s ‘Insurance industry facing a climate of fear’.
(Image credit: Maplecroft)
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FUCKING THANK YOU.
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