BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate insurance urged for poor
Could you use insurance for this kind of crisis? It's nice in theory, and maybe for a few high-profile, feel-good early experiments. But once the insurers set their actuarial scientists to sit down and do some serious analysis, the premiums will go way up. (Although maybe still cheaper than
Also, aren't some of the disasters we're talking about, actually the kind of acts of God that insurers wouldn't touch?
3 comments:
You raise a good point about the "acts of God" aspect and how insurers might come to define "God."
This is a thought-provoking article and seems related to the subject of prediction markets you've brought up before.
I suspect that market-based solutions to risks associated with global climate change aren't going to sit too well with free-market thinking as it now stands.
Hedge-funds aren't regulated much now. Part of the trick to making money in them, it seems to me, is based on the lack of transparency.
One of the best parts of this insurance idea is that it could help to bring more transparency to market instruments for managing risks.
Thanks Rup3rt, cool link
May have to have some of my site in it.
John Robb points to an interesting 7 page LA Times article in Robb's usual cut-to-the chase style titles it: "The End of Risk Pooling."
The article you point to suggests public-private partnerships. Like it or not I suspect that governments are going to become more involved as unfettered insurance markets become unpopular.
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