Sunday, February 20, 2011

Insurance

I notice in the news online that there is a move to have states take out disaster insurance http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/20/3143554.htm?section=justin. That should be an interesting exercise. I thought the state stepped in and indemnified when it came to the uninsurable - your taxes at work as the ultimate insurance. Still I don't have a problem with letting the cold hard actuarial facts drive some management decisions in the state: it was the Fire Underwriters Board who invented and funded the Fire Brigades. It's cheaper to fight fires than have them go to conflagrations and take out all the insured property at once. And I suspect that insurance companies didn't wait for the ultimate proof of the link between smoking and lung cancer - the risk of going broke makes a company wondrously aware of reasonable cause and effect and the balance of risk. So I suspect that the insurers are going to force whole countries to take steps on sustainability on the basis of scientific reason and the bottom line rather than wait to be absolutely 100% certain of the mechanism that is driving this uncontrolled experiment with climate.

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