Shareholders target QBE over climate change ‘failure’

QBE Insurance Group has become the latest big listed company to be hit with a demand for more transparency about potential risks it faces from climate change, amid calls by a prominent company director for boards to consider "uncomfortable questions" on the issue.

QBE has been hit with a shareholder resolution on climate risk.

Melbourne NGO Market Forces, which last year filed similar resolutions targeting Santos, Oil Search and Origin Energy, has this time teamed up with the $10 billion Local Government Super to call for more disclosure of climate risks by the insurer.

Read the story by Ruth Collins in The Age - “Shareholders target QBE over climate change ‘failure’."

We Can’t Close Our Eyes to Climate Change

Contrary to a common perception, ignoring climate change won't make it disappear. Global research going back to 1824 in fields ranging through physics, oceanography, biology and geology have confirmed human activity—mainly burning fossil fuels, raising livestock and destroying carbon sinks like forests and wetlands—is increasing greenhouse gas emissions and causing global temperatures to rise rapidly, putting humanity at risk. Every legitimate scientific academy and institution and every government, except the current U.S. administration, agrees.

Yet the disconnect between that reality and government action to confront the greatest crisis humanity faces is astounding. Nowhere is that disconnect more profound than in the U.S., where the attitude is "out of sight, out of mind.”

Read the EcoWatch story - “We Can’t Close Our Eyes to Climate Change.”

Take a minute, scan through the fear on these faces that have seen the future

Many people are simply scared about what is happening to our climate and the fear is deepened even further by humanity’s inadequate response.

Rolling the dice - feeling the fear.

Most every lecture I have sat through, be it in Melbourne or elsewhere, it seems to be shrouded in a cloud of disillusionment; a pervasive cynicism about the absolutely inadequate response of the “responsible men”.

This sweeping fear, and disenchantment, has been captured by the Huffington Post through a series of pictures of scientists – “Photographer Captures Scientists' Frightened Responses To Climate Change Discussions”.

Take a few minutes, look at these faces – these are the people who have seen the future and the devastation and difficulties is reflected on their faces.