There are a lot of nut bar politicians that will argue until they are blue in the face that climate change has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels. "CO2? bah! nothing to worry about," they say as they rush off to a fundraiser attended by BP and Exxon shareholders.
Something will have to happen to change their minds in order for them to legislate real changes to our environmental policies. So what is that thing that must happen? The best thing that can 'happen' in order to sway a politician is a big campaign contribution. But who out there with deep pockets and a lot to gain would want to sway politicians to take up the climate change issue?
Reading this month's wired magazine I think I figured it out. Bruce sterling wrote a piece about the threats to the earth. In it he mentions that there has been a marked increase in insurance payouts to policy holders struck by natural disasters which are on the rise as a result of climate change.
We all know insurance companies have money. We all know insurance companies don't like to pay out money to policy holders. We all know that natural disasters will get worse with climate change. We all know that natural disasters cost insurance companies a lot of money.
Connecting those dots we can only hope that the insurance companies start lobbying hard for 'radical' changes to environmental policy.
Sadly - I think insurance companies are more likely to not insure against natural disasters rather than try and change the world for the better. I hope I'm wrong.
andre
Posted by andre at March 21, 2004 02:28 AM