Insurance and Climate Change
Posted by Big Gav
Joel Makower at WorldChanging has a column that talks about something that I like to point out occasionally - the driving force behind our adoption of efforts to mitigate global warming may be the insurance industry - once they start passing on the costs of this problem to people and companies, the need to abandon fossil fuel consumption will become apparent to us all (and eventually to our benighted governments).
If government policies won't lead to aggressive action on climate change, maybe the insurance industry will.
It seems to have gone largely unreported in the U.S., but in the past week, two developments have shaken the largely staid world of insurance. On Tuesday, preliminary estimates released by the Munich Re Foundation at the international climate conference in Montreal found that world has suffered more than $200 billion in weather-related economic losses over the past year, making 2005 the costliest year on record.
Just days before, 20 leading U.S. investors urged 30 of the largest publicly-held insurance companies in North America to disclose their financial exposure from climate change and steps they are taking to reduce those financial impacts. The group cited the enormous risks that insurance companies face from escalating losses caused by extreme weather events and the financial risks and opportunities associated with climate change.
The recent talks in Montreal on the follow on treaty to replace Kyoto enabled our Environment Minister - Senator Campbell, who has recently shown some signs of understanding the problem - to indulge in some stupid politicking (although he did come up with a colourful quote, predicting the "heat death" of the world if we don't do something). While I understand the government's problem - we have a large current account deficit and coal is a major export earner for us (and I imagine coal mining companies are welcome donors to Liberal party coffers), it seems that sticking our heads in the sand and chanting "clean coal will save us" is a pretty pathetic way of remaining in denial, as well as being likely to cost us in the long run - both in terms of becoming a pariah amongst developed nations and lagging behind the rest of the world in adopting clean technologies, which means we'll be paying for technology from overseas instead of giving local industry a chance to develop. There's nothing I detest more than deliberately shortsighted people - although his bizarre attempt to paint wind as "old technology" and coal as "new technology" must deserve some sort of prize for newspeak.
The world would be condemned to a "hot death" if it did not pursue so-called clean coal technologies and attempts to tackle global warming should not come at the expense of economic growth, according to federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell. He also said there was no real upside into pumping more money into old technologies such as wind turbines.
Senator Campbell yesterday welcomed a decision by the 157 countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol on climate change to begin a new round of negotiations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. However, he did not budge from Australia's decision to continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels, such as coal.
"Coal and fossil fuels will still be a part of the future needs of the world in 80 years' time," Senator Campbell told The Age en route to Australia from the climate change negotiations in Montreal.
"You have to do renewables … but if you don't focus on cleaning up fossil fuels you are condemning the world to a hot death," Senator Campbell said. He said evidence that burning fossil fuels was changing the world's climate was becoming "irrefutable" but "the fact is we want strong economic growth … people want secure jobs".
Australia and the US have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, pushing instead for voluntary agreements. Last week Senator Campbell claimed Kyoto was almost buried and that other countries were realising Australia was right not to join.
However, nearly every industrialised nation agreed on Saturday to engage in talks aimed at producing a new set of binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect from 2012.
MOF has a post on the talks called "Emissions Accomplished" which notes our ingloroius spin attempts and has a brief quote from Bill Clinton showing Senator Campbell how it should be done.
International climate talks in Montreal: U.S. Delegation Walks Out. The U.S. and Australia are blocking any Kyoto successor. A decent press roundup with a debug of the Australian spin is in this WaPo World Opinion.
Flying in an ex U.S. president on short notice was a bit of a stunt, but of course it didn´t change anything:"I think it's crazy for us to play games with our children's future," Mr. Clinton said. "We know what's happening to the climate, we have a highly predictable set of consequences if we continue to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and we know we have an alternative that will lead us to greater prosperity."
But maybe this gave a realistic impression:The National Environmental Trust distributed custom-printed noise-making rubber whoopee cushions printed with a caricature of President Bush and the words "Emissions Accomplished."
Grist has a couple of interesting posts on the topic - "As the World Spurns - U.S. attacked on three fronts for obstructing climate action" and "Let's Take This Slow on the Road - Campaign by right-wing U.S. group aims to derail E.U. climate policy" which looks at a campaign to try and white-ant the effort to do the only thing which may work in the long run - enforceable caps on emissions which get reduced over time rather than wishful thinking and hot-air communiques.
American lobbyist Chris Horner is trying to convince major European companies to join a campaign against the Kyoto Protocol and any future such strategies to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases -- but he's not making much headway. Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the right-wing Washington think tank known for arguing against the scientific consensus on global warming -- and getting lots of funding from ExxonMobil. He's been talking to Ford Europe, German mega-utility RWE, and other E.U. firms in hopes of forming a coalition of companies, journalists, academics, and others to promote opposition to greenhouse-gas emissions caps -- similar to an industry-backed anti-Kyoto effort in the U.S. during the late 1990s. "I don't know why it's surprising [I have lobbied European companies]," he told the Independent. "What is surprising to me is why it's not working." Both Ford Europe and RWE say they don't back Horner's plan.
Elsewhere the BBC reports that the Inuit are sueing the US over their climate policy (and its resultant effects on the Inuit and other arctic inhabitants, with arctic ice rapidly disappearing).TreeHugger has a report than Leonardo DiCaprio's latest project is a Global Warming film called "11th Hour".
Leonardo DiCaprio is teaming up with Tree Media Group to produce a documentary about global environmental issues. TMG is a production company formed with the mission to use media to support and sustain civil society. The feature length film, 11th Hour focuses on global warming and solutions to the climate change crisis. The movie is set to be released in Fall of '06.
WorldChanging has an interesting post called "Energy Efficiency and Intensity", which notes some positive trends in US carbon emission. For some reason the cynic in me wonders how much of this is attributable to US heavy industry and manufacturing moving offshore and the local economy becoming more dependent on service industry jobs. Home loan flipping is probably a bit less energy intensive than making cars.
Carbon dioxide output from the United States will peak and then begin to fall in just a few years, according to the numbers derived by John Whitehead at the Environmental Economics blog. The reason is that carbon intensity -- the amount of carbon produced per dollar of GDP -- is dropping at a rate faster than GDP is growing. At the current pace of intensity reduction, CO2 output in the US will peak in 2008, and begin a gradual decline thereafter. (We previously discussed carbon intensity here.)
This is good news for a number of reasons, not least that it suggests that the current biggest contributor to the greenhouse effect could, with a bit more effort, achieve a far more dramatic reduction in CO2. How to do this is a mainstay of discussion at WorldChanging; here's a look at some of the numbers underlying these options. CO2 intensity is a function of two components: the energy required per dollar equivalent of GDP (or use efficiency of energy); and the CO2 output per MW equivalent of energy (or carbon efficiency of energy). By taking a closer look at the data, we can see which one has mattered more -- and which could stand some improvement.
WorldChanging also has a post up on Google Transit, which makes life easier for people trying to work out how to get around (in Oregon anyway - hopefully this one quickly spreads to attain worldwide coverage).One of the biggest obstacles to people using public transportation is learning how the system works--where to go, when to go, etc. Any transit agency worth its salt has trip-planning tools available online, but they generally suffer from poor-to-horrible interfaces, due to lack of development money. This keeps riders away due to confusion. Even if a good system exists in one city, it is always different from that of another city, and newcomers won't know where to find it. Having transit trip-planning data readable and presentable by a clean, easy-to-understand, universal tool will make a big difference. It looks like that's starting to happen.
Google now does public transit. At least, it does for Portland, Oregon.
For those who can't get used to the idea of public transport (or don't have access to any) TreeHugger has a spot on the new Camry hybrid that Toyota will be releasing shortly. TreeHugger also has a post on "Flexible, Ultra-Thin Solar Panels for Hybrids" which would help improve hybrid mileage even further.
One peak oil related note - the Narcosphere (which isn't the most mainstream of sources, though Google Alerts is happy enough to report its output) has pointed out that Latin America's oil production is past its peak (although this data is from the ASPO and doesn't include Venezuelan heavy oil).
Latin America’s production of conventional oil reached its peak during the last decade and is now in a process of inexorable decline, according to data released by ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas.
Considering all of Latin America, ASPO’s data points out that the region reached its oil production peak in 1998, while the peak of oil discovery came in 1977. Normally, any oil producing region, be it a single field or an entire continent, reaches its peak production rate some time after discoveries reach their maximum. ASPO’s data is consistent with that methodology.
While the data relies on public sources and is subject to rounding, ASPO claims that its compilation is a useful tool to determine the general oil production trend. Latin America’s oil deposits are depleting at a rate of 3.3% per annum, according to the data.
Taken together, Latin American countries produce approximately 7.5 million barrels of oil per day. ASPO estimates that the region held 192 billion barrels before exploration began, of which 110 billion have been extracted so far.
The leading producer, Mexico, produced in 2004 about 3.5 million barrels per day and had an annual depletion rate of 5.0%. Venezuela produced about 2 million barrels per day with an annual depletion rate of 3.2%
Earlier this year various publications, including the Mexican daily La Jornada, reported that Mexico’s biggest oil field, the supergiant Cantarell in Campeche Sound, had reached its production peak.
And to close, I may as well mention this weekend's ugly events from Sydney's southern beaches. Crikey's Stephen Feneley wonders if our new anti-terror laws will be invoked against those responsible (the rioters, not the tabloids and talk show hosts):
It seems those anti-terror laws were passed just in the nick of time. All those cosmopolitan elites who said we didn't need laws against the incitement of racial violence should be hanging their heads in shame over their skinny decaf lattes today in the wake of the outbreak of Skip-on-Leb violence on Sydney's beaches. How shameful that anyone could have questioned the Attorney General's determination to rush these laws through Parliament.
The awful violence at Cronulla and Maroubra was proof of the threat posed to our democracy by evil forces (in this case pissed white Cronulla home-boys) determined to stir up hatred against people for no other reason than their suspected ethnicity or religion. No doubt federal authorities – armed with the new anti-terror laws and with the full backing of Mr Ruddock – will move swiftly to track down and prosecute the malevolent ringleaders responsible for sending those text messages that drew the rioting yobs to the beach yesterday afternoons.
I am joking of course. It's unlikely Ruddock would want the laws used in this case, although it might have been different had those text messages originated from a mobile belonging to someone of middle-eastern appearance. Even though the anti-incitement provisions of the legislation are ideally suited for this event, it's a safe bet no one in the Government ever thought a situation would arise where the wrong-doers would fit the profile of Howard battlers.
Before Paul Sheahan of the Sydney Morning Herald accuses me of turning a blind eye to the behaviour of people he refers to as Lebanese gangstas, I am not excusing violence perpetrated by anyone. The people who beat up on the lifeguards at Cronulla on the previous weekend should be caught and prosecuted.
However there seems little doubt that the incitement of yesterday's violence was the the work of people who regard themselves as true blue Aussies. This kind of white-bread fundamentalism wasn't in the Ruddock/Howard script when they whipped up hysteria about the threat lurking within our midst in order to justify their stupid and contemptible laws.
Dark clouds ahead ?
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