Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Lloyd's of London & Global Warming
Lloyd’s of London, the oldest insurance market in the world urged its members to start taking global warming more seriously or they will be destroyed. They recommended raising premiums or even classifying some risks as uninsurable due to greenhouse gases and rising sea levels in their report Climate Change, Adapt or Bust.
“Although it’s almost two decades since the UN recognized that climate change was a catastrophic threat to the Earth, it's clear that the insurance industry has not taken catastrophe trends seriously enough. Climate change is today's problem not tomorrow's. If we don't take action now to understand the changing nature of our planet we will face extinction," said Lloyd's director, Rolf Tolle.
Lloyd's noted that high sea temperatures are a key ingredient in wind storms… Increased hurricanes, such as Katrina, which devastated New Orleans last year, should not have been a surprise since academics had warned in 2001 of this kind of weather pattern. "Recent temperatures are probably outside the range of past oscillations and seem to suggest we will be caught in an upward cycle for some time to come," Lloyd's predicted.
The market also noted the speculation about the polar ice cap melting and warned that a 12 foot rise in water levels worldwide would inundate almost every coastal city. Rising sea levels should encourage insurers to consider how much business they wanted to have connected to vulnerable coastal areas. They might consider withdrawing or restricting cover in flood-prone "hotspots", it suggested.
Terry MacalisterTuesday June 6, 2006The Guardian
“Although it’s almost two decades since the UN recognized that climate change was a catastrophic threat to the Earth, it's clear that the insurance industry has not taken catastrophe trends seriously enough. Climate change is today's problem not tomorrow's. If we don't take action now to understand the changing nature of our planet we will face extinction," said Lloyd's director, Rolf Tolle.
Lloyd's noted that high sea temperatures are a key ingredient in wind storms… Increased hurricanes, such as Katrina, which devastated New Orleans last year, should not have been a surprise since academics had warned in 2001 of this kind of weather pattern. "Recent temperatures are probably outside the range of past oscillations and seem to suggest we will be caught in an upward cycle for some time to come," Lloyd's predicted.
The market also noted the speculation about the polar ice cap melting and warned that a 12 foot rise in water levels worldwide would inundate almost every coastal city. Rising sea levels should encourage insurers to consider how much business they wanted to have connected to vulnerable coastal areas. They might consider withdrawing or restricting cover in flood-prone "hotspots", it suggested.
Terry MacalisterTuesday June 6, 2006The Guardian
# posted by Florence Vincent @ 6:44 PM 
