Insurers Won’t Save a Heating World From Floods and Fire
From Germany and China to California and Australia, the risks from climate disasters are getting too hard to calculate. Expect fewer policies and soaring premiums.
The insurance industry will want out of this business.
Photograph: AFP/Getty
There’s bad news for those looking for comfort in the face of flooding that’s inundated cities in China, Germany and India and wildfires that have consumed suburbs in California, Canada, and Australia: The insurance industry isn’t planning on hanging around to bail you out.
An insurance rescue mission is such a routine aspect of natural disasters in rich countries that the value of losses from major events is often as familiar as their physical characteristics, such as wind speed or Richter magnitude. The industry paid out $82 billion in such losses last year alone, according to Munich Re AG, and some $143 billion of catastrophe bonds have been issued since 1997.