March 20, 2006
From Dallas Morning News

No matter how bad global warming gets, Omaha will stay high and dry. So why is Nebraska’s state insurance commissioner heading a national task force on the implications of climate change?

Because the warming of the Earth’s surface is already causing havoc far from any ice cap or coastline. Insurance companies have seen a 15-fold increase in insured losses over the last 30 years from floods, tornadoes, severe hailstorms, droughts and brushfires, in addition to hurricanes. That’s what prompted the National Association of Insurance Commissioners — the state officials who regulate the insurance industry — to embark on a hard look at how well insurance companies are prepared to meet the growing challenge.

They’re not alone. Some of the world’s heaviest of heavyweight investors, including the pension funds for California teachers and state employees, are demanding that the industries they invest in analyze how global warming will affect their value in coming years. The Investor Network on Climate Risk, whose two dozen members manage $3 trillion in assets, drew more than 200 participants, including a who’s who of Wall Street firms, to its 2005 summit.

All the scientists in the world, if they spoke with one voice, couldn’t generate that kind of clout.

As the investment gurus are quick to say, from a financial standpoint, global warming creates both risks and opportunities. Somewhere, someone is probably already dreaming up a marketable security based on carbon credits.

For most of us, though, the newfound interest in climate change on the part of institutional investors and insurance regulators is just one more sign — if we need any — that this issue won’t go away. Almost alone among Western nations, the Bush administration continues to hold out against calls for mandatory caps on carbon emissions.

But it will find the demands harder to resist when those making them represent the kind of green that lines our pockets rather than the kind that grows under our feet.

http://www.wsusignpost.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/03/20/441ee73662624