(AU) Climate Change Could Put Insurance Out Of Reach For Many Australians

The Guardian - Royce Kurmelovs

The financial industry regulator says insurers may be able to pay future claims, but fewer people will be able to secure coverage

The insurance issue is making bushfire recovery around Cobargo harder, says Michael Brosnan of Social Justice Advocates of the Sapphire Coast. Photograph: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images
 

Millions of Australians could be left uninsured as the effects of climate change put increasing pressure on the financial system, the industry’s regulatory body has warned.

The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (Apra) executive director Dr Sean Carmody told a Senate hearing on Tuesday the nation’s insurers and banks were taking steps to prepare for worsening bushfire seasons and more extreme weather events.

However, he said the resultant rising insurance premiums may put coverage out of reach for many people, threatening the stability of the wider economy.

"From our point of view in terms of thinking of the financial system as a whole, it’s not enough if insurers have the capacity to pay every claim, but there’s a shrinking number of people who can actually secure insurance,” Carmody told the hearing.

“You could extrapolate to a tiny pool where no one has an insurance policy but every claim can be paid. That might still mean there is no insolvency problem at an insurance level, but from a financial system point of view, that represents a failure.”

Carmody said the regulator had been regularly advising large financial institutions about the financial risks posed by climate change.

This advice went beyond the physical and “transitional” risks – that is actions by shareholder activists or protesters – but also to the possibility of future lawsuits where no action is taken now.

“Increasingly, there are court cases here and internationally that suggest if we do not think about and look at climate risk, there’s potential liabilities that arise there,” he said.

The total cost to the insurance industry from extreme weather and natural disasters between November 2019 and February 2020 alone stood in the range of $5bn.

With similar events likely to increase in frequency and extremity in the future, Carmody said Apra was investigating how it may impact the country’s biggest financial institutions over the next 30 years.

Pressed by the Labor senator Tim Ayres on whether climate change would eventually “overwhelm” even the best efforts at mitigation, Carmody agreed.

“The cost of insurance is trending up, which will translate to higher premiums in aggregate,” he said.

His comments follow evidence given by residents still struggling after the catastrophic bushfires of 2019-20.

Michael Brosnan, the chair of community group Social Justice Advocates of the Sapphire Coast, said the insurance issue was making it harder to mount an effective recovery in the area around Cobargo in New South Wales.

Brosnan said his organisation was aware of at least 63 people waiting for basic sanitation some 14 months after the bushfires tore through the region.

“Up until June or July last year, many of these people were driving to Rocky Hall and Wyndham for toilet, shower and internet,” Brosnan said.

Links

• Australia must prepare now for climate-related disasters or pay more later, insurance regulator says
• Insurance giant Suncorp to end coverage and finance for oil and gas industry
• Anti-Adani coalmine activists target insurance broker with virtual protest
• Climate crisis will make insurance unaffordable for people who need it most
• Most Australian chief executives believe climate crisis a threat to business
• If the bushfires won't force climate policy change, we need to circumvent Scott Morrison
• Scott Morrison in danger of becoming a 'climate change casualty', says Steve Bracks
• Suncorp and IAG temporarily stop selling insurance in fire-affected areas of Victoria and NSW
• 'A duty of care': Australian teenagers take their climate crisis plea to court
• Australia's summer the wettest in four years amid cooling La Niña

Plastic Is Part Of The Carbon Cycle And Needs To Be Included In Climate Calculations

The Conversation - Xia Zhu

The plastic problem isn’t separate from climate change. (Shutterstock)

Author Xia Zhu is PhD Student, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto

Plastic pollution and climate change are two prominent environmental issues of our time. Plastic was once thought to be a miracle invention that made life simpler for families.

But just as our exploitation of fossil fuels led to climate change, the unsustainable use of plastic materials has led to a global environmental catastrophe. To this day, plastic pollution has infiltrated every part of our planet, from remote mountain lakes to the ocean to the very air we breathe.

The unsustainable consumption of nonrenewable resources is the common root of both these problems, and beneath the surface, there are many links between these two issues.

Plastic is part of the carbon cycle

To better understand how plastic particles move through the environment, scientists should investigate their transport as they do for nitrogen, carbon and water.

To do this, they should formally adopt the terminology used to study these biogeochemical cycles, including “reservoirs,” which are places of storage, and “fluxes,” which describe the movement of substances from one place to another over time. This will help us understand the transport mechanisms and fate of plastic pollution in the environment, which are major gaps in the field today.

Plastic should be studied in the same way nitrogen, carbon and water are, so that scientists can understand its movement and its fate. (Shutterstock)

In fact, all the plastic that has ever been produced is part of the carbon cycle. Overall, an enormous seven gigatonnes — or seven billion tonnes — of plastic have been produced, mainly from chemicals extracted from the fossil carbon reservoir.

This is not much different from the roughly 14 billion tonnes of carbon emitted into the atmosphere every year from the same reservoir due to human activities.

Plastic transports carbon in different ways. For instance, plastic can become incorporated into living organisms, or settle to the bottom of the ocean as aggregates of plastic and organic matter.

It can also release greenhouse gases at every stage of its life cycle, from production to transportation to waste disposal. Scientists and governments should investigate how plastic pollution transports carbon because nutrient redistribution has implications for the livelihoods of ecosystems and the well-being of living organisms.

Since plastic polymers are so persistent, almost every piece of plastic we have ever produced is still somewhere on this planet. This suggests, due to the sheer amount of plastic pollution, that plastic pollution is on the same scale as global transport processes of carbon, also on the order of gigatonnes.

The key takeaway is that plastic pollution has its own cycle, and that it may also play a fundamental role in the carbon cycle — the movement of carbon between different reservoirs such as the atmosphere, ocean and organisms — a cycle that is very relevant to global climate change.

Two sides of the same coin

Several recent articles by journalists and scientists have framed the plastic pollution problem as a distraction from the problem of climate change. The issue of plastic pollution may compete with climate change for funding and attention, delaying action what is a more pressing environmental issue, they say.

I disagree. Research shows that the plastic problem is not independent from climate change.

Greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. (Pixabay)

Plastic and climate are two sides of the same coin: the majority of plastic polymers are made from petrochemical feed-stocks and their raw materials for synthesis are ethylene and propylene.

These compounds are derived from naphtha, one of several chemicals refined from petroleum. What else is refined from petroleum? Gasoline, the fossil fuel we burn for energy that emits greenhouse gases.

These sister compounds are used differently but they have a common origin and they instigate the very issues in question. When demand for petroleum drops, companies ramp up their plastic production. When demand for plastic drops, fossil fuel companies might be inclined to shift their production ratio again. Failing to recognize the intimate connections between these issues not only makes tackling these issues inefficient, but may also undermine efforts on both fronts.

Moving forward

Through the many years of efforts by researchers, activists, and policy-makers around the world, we are starting to see a big difference in public attitude towards these issues. On the climate front, the adoption of the Paris Agreement and the energy of the youth movement fill me with optimism.

The Paris Climate Summit (COP21) in 2015. (COP21 UofT Students, 2015)

On the plastic pollution front, a UN international agreement to limit emissions of plastic may be on the horizon.

By acknowledging the connections between these issues, I only see benefits. Climate plans should acknowledge the greenhouse gas emissions from plastics and how plastics can be better managed.

For instance, Canada’s most recent climate plan acknowledged its ban on single-use items in 2021 and recognized the importance of transitioning to a circular economy. Likewise, plastic pollution plans can describe the benefits to that city, state or country’s climate strategy by mitigating plastic production.

Moving forward, we should keep this in mind and tackle these two issues together — the opportunities to do so are plentiful.

Links

• Plastic waste and climate change - what's the connection?
• Plastic waste releases greenhouse gases
• How plastics contribute to climate change 
• More Plastic Is On the Way: What It Means for Climate Change
• Single-use plastics a serious climate change hazard, study warns
• Recycling isn’t enough — the world’s plastic pollution crisis is only getting worse
• Beyond our oceans: Microplastics pollute rivers and lakes too
• They’re everywhere: New study finds polyester fibres throughout the Arctic Ocean
• How to get abandoned, lost and discarded ‘ghost’ fishing gear out of the ocean

A Newly Released Report By UNDP Confirms That Education Is Key To Addressing Climate Change

United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) | United Nations Development Programme Survey (UNDP)

A newly released report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) confirms that education is key to addressing climate change

The innovative survey was distributed across mobile gaming networks in order to include hard-to-reach audiences in traditional polling, like youth under the age of 18. Photo: UNDP Bhutan

The Peoples' Climate Vote

Download the Report

(PDF 27.9 MB)

UNITAR

The largest ever opinion survey on climate change was carried out by UN CC:Learn partner UNDP in 2020 and showed that 64% of 1.2 million respondents think that climate change is a global emergency.

The survey entitled "People's Climate Vote" covered 50 countries, reflecting a bit more than half of the world's population, and its results were analyzed by the University of Oxford.

Over 500,000 respondents of the survey were under the age of 18 at the time of the poll, which made youth the biggest age group surveyed.

One of the survey's key findings has proven that education is paramount to ramp up climate action: the poll confirmed that there is a clear correlation between level of education and belief in climate change.

 For instance, people who held university degrees or were attending university were way more likely to believe that climate change is a global emergency. 

This spanned across all surveyed countries, from low-income to high-income ones, with 82% of people in Bhutan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and 87% and 82% in France and Japan, respectively.

Something we saw very clearly was the high correlation between education and belief in the climate emergency. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to think that there is a climate emergency." Cassie Flynn - Strategic Adviser to the UNDP

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UNDP

United Nations Development Programme Survey respondents were asked if climate change was a global emergency and whether they supported eighteen key climate policies across six action areas: economy, energy, transport, food & farms, nature and protecting people.  

Results show that people often want broad climate policies beyond the current state of play.

For example, in eight of the ten survey countries with the highest emissions from the power sector, majorities backed more renewable energy. 

In four out of the five countries with the highest emissions from land-use change and enough data on policy preferences, there was majority support for conserving forests and land. 

Nine out of ten of the countries with the most urbanized populations backed more use of clean electric cars and buses, or bicycles.  

The survey was distributed across mobile gaming networks in order to include hard-to-reach audiences in traditional polling, like youth under the age of 18.


Young people will bear the brunt of climate change. They are also more likely to act on it. UNDP has conducted the biggest ever opinion survey on climate change, with over 1.2 million respondents, mostly youth, and 64% of whom considered climate change an emergency.

Polling experts at the University of Oxford weighted the huge sample to make it representative of the age, gender, and education population profiles of the countries in the survey, resulting in small margins of error of +/- 2%.

Policies had wide-ranging support, with the most popular being conserving forests and land (54% public support), more solar, wind and renewable power (53%), adopting climate-friendly farming techniques (52%) and investing more in green businesses and jobs (50%). 

The survey shows a direct link between a person’s level of education and their desire for climate action. 

There was very high recognition of the climate emergency among those who had attended university or college in all countries, from lower-income countries such as Bhutan (82%) and Democratic Republic of the Congo (82%), to wealthy countries like France (87%) and Japan (82%). 

When it comes to age, younger people (under 18) were more likely to say climate change is an emergency than older people. 

Nevertheless, other age groups were not far behind, with 65% of those aged 18-35, 66% aged 36-59 and 58% of those over 60, illustrating how widely held this view has become.

Links

• (AU) Australians Fear Climate Change More Than Catching Covid, Survey Shows
• UN Global Climate Poll: ‘The People’s Voice Is Clear – They Want Action’
• (AU) Survey Shows Australian Support For Paris Agreement And Net Zero Target
• (AU) Climate Change Worrying More Australians Than Ever Before, Australia Institute Report
• A Million Young People Urge Governments To Prioritise Climate Crisis
• (AU) Australian Youth Feel Unprepared, Uneducated And Underappreciated On Climate Change: Report
• Italy To Become First Country To Make Learning About Climate Change Compulsory For School Students
• 8 Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom