The world’s leading risk analyst, the reinsurance giant Lloyd’s of London, has once again raised the red flag over climate change, per this article in the Insurance Journal.
Trevor Maynard, Lloyd’s manager of emerging risks, says flatly: “Climate change is a very real threat. It would be unthinkable for us to ignore one of the biggest dangers we face in the coming decades.”
In the constant (and often idiotic) debate over climate change, the single rationale that deniers have mounted to explain the alleged worldwide “scientific conspiracy” to frighten the public about global warming is that the greatest scientists or our time are scuffling for government research grants.
So, , you have self-interested corporations (ExxonMobil, et al) and their PR lackeys (Pat Michaels, Tim Ball, etc.) on one side, and you have a worldwide cabal of manipulative, conspiratorial, unethical and grant-hungry scientists on the other. (I know it’s stupid, but bear with me, just through the next paragraph …)
How, then, could the deniers explain the position of Lloyd’s? This is an entity whose admitted self-interest is profit – a profit that accrues more reliably when things don’t go wrong. Unlike the military industrial types, this is truly a capitalist leader that is heavily invested in peace, security and, now, in the orderly adaptation to, and remediation of, climate change. Finally a sane voice.
Fortunately, Maynard promises to bring that voice to North America: “We will also be taking the debate to the U.S. – where opinion differs widely on this.”
Can we suggest that he start in Oklahoma?
