Thumbing idly through last Friday’s Business Herald lift-out, I clicked to attention at a double page spread headed Climate of Fear reporting on how seriously the insurance industry is taking climate change. Peter Huck’s article didn’t appear on the Herald website for a few days, but it’s there now, I’m glad to report. It’s a thorough and scientifically aware piece of journalism which it was pleasing to see given prominence in the paper. And no, he didn’t go looking for any obliging deniers to balance the concern of the insurance industry.
How do insurers calculate their exposure, as “hundred year” weather disasters become ever more common in the “new normal”? Getting a handle on it means taking climate science very seriously. And the news on the science front is not good, as he briefly recounts.
Continue reading “Risky business: insuring against climate change”