Watching Sandy, Ignoring Climate Change

The reinsurance industry – which protects other insurers – is sounding the alarm on climate change. Munich Re, the leading reinsurance firm, issued a report two weeks before Hurricane Sandy struck suggesting that North America – the 4 percent of the global population that uses about one quarter of the world’s fossil fuels – will bear the brunt of violent weather catastrophes. Weather-related loss events have quintupled over the last three decades, and the company identifies climate change as a leading culprit. The trio of storms converging on metropolitan New York confirms the company’s analysis. “Coming as it is just a week before Election Day, Sandy makes the fact that climate change has been entirely ignored during this campaign seem all the more grotesque,” writes Elizabeth Kolbert in her blog for The New Yorker. On its website, Munich Re identifies climate change as “one of the greatest risks facing mankind.” Researchers warn against blaming any one event on climate change. But victims of this year’s storm surges, flooding, drought, wildfires, blizzards, heat waves and other extreme weather expect their leaders to be responsible, heeding warnings from scientists and industry, and preparing. – YaleGlobal