IAG says climate change could make world ‘uninsurable’: Financial Review

The insurance industry will be unable to operate effectively if the current trajectory of climate change proves accurate, Insurance Australia Group (IAG) Executive Jacki Johnson told the Financial Review.

Climate change will make the world uninsurable.

Johnson’s comments come after the UN Environment’s Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) announced a partnership with a group of 16 large, global insurers and reinsurers (of which IAG is included), to develop a new generation of risk assessment tools that enable the risk transfer industry to better understand the impacts of climate change on their business.

She adds that a failure to reduce greenhouse emissions could result in a world that is “pretty much uninsurable”, an outcome that would hit poorer regions hardest.

In Australia, Johnson says a temperature rise of over three degrees would inflict higher levels of extreme weather events such as cyclones and flooding to Queensland, while a rise of more than four degrees would render insurers unable to provide protection in certain areas of the world.

Read the Reinsurance News story - “IAG says climate change could make world ‘uninsurable’: Financial Review.”

‘We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention

"We’re doomed,” says Mayer Hillman with such a beaming smile that it takes a moment for the words to sink in. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.”

Dr Mayer Hillman with his bike outside his home in London.

Hillman, an 86-year-old social scientist and senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute, does say so. His bleak forecast of the consequence of runaway climate change, he says without fanfare, is his “last will and testament”. His last intervention in public life. “I’m not going to write anymore because there’s nothing more that can be said,” he says when I first hear him speak to a stunned audience at the University of East Anglia late last year.

Read the Patrick Barkham story from The Guardian - “‘We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention.”

New analysis shows that NEG is worse than doing nothing

New modelling by energy market analysts RepuTex has added to the deepening concern about the proposed National Energy Guarantee, suggesting it is calibrated to achieve an outcome that is worse than doing nothing.

The RepuTex analysis builds on concerns that the modelling used to underpin support for the NEG made a complete hash of estimating what would happen if no policy was in place.

It finds that the “do nothing” scenario still results in a 29 per cent cut in emissions by 2030 – more than the 19 per cent assumed by the Energy Security Board and more than the 26 per cent targeted under the NEG.

That means that the NEG would provide no incentive for any new investment in renewable energy.

Read the story by Giles Parkinson from RenewEconomy - “New analysis shows that NEG is worse than doing nothing.”

Ideology and decisions rarely make for comfortable bedfellows

Queensland Deputy Premier, Jeff Seeney,
 directs council to remove references to
climate change induced sea level rises.

Ideology is frequently the driver of many decisions.

Rarely, however do the two combine to produce a good outcome.

Queensland’s Moreton Bay Council has been directed to remove all references to climate change-derived sea level rises from the regional plan.

This direction, considered by some to be ideologically driven will have wide ramifications, experts claim.

An ABC story discussing the direction is headed: “Jeff Seeney orders Moreton Bay Regional Council to remove references to climate change-derived sea level rises from regional plan.”

The council is obliged by law to obey the direction.