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erieangel -> Insurance industry worried about climate change (3/15/2012 1:05:45 AM)
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-schiffman/climate-change-politics_b_1330492.html
On March 1, senators Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse met with insurance industry officials on Capital Hill to discuss their concerns about climate change and the escalating costs of damage from extreme weather. The global insurance industry is huge, three-times bigger than the oil industry. And right now these companies are running scared. Some are threatening to cancel coverage for homeowners within 200 miles of the coast, where hurricanes are on the increase, and in drying areas of the West, where wildfires have wreaked havoc in recent years.
Marsh & McLennan (MMC) one of the world's largest insurance brokers called climate change "one of the most significant emerging risks facing the world today," while the insurance giant AIG has established an Office of Environment and Climate Change to review and assess the risks to insurers in the years ahead.
2011 was a bad year for the insurance companies due to the steep rise in catastrophe-related losses. And the industry's own scientists are predicting that things are primed to get a lot worse in the years ahead.
The Republicans say that we can't afford to pay for cutting the carbon emissions which climatologists assert are largely responsible for rising global temperatures and the spike in violent weather. What we truly cannot afford, according to our nation's leading insurers, is to continue to deny a problem whose price tag is slated to go through the roof if we don't act quickly.
Though they seem late to the party, the insurance industry chiming in on this crisis might just be what is needed to get the deniers to get their collective heads out of the sand.
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