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P&C Industry needs to “bridge gap in public acceptance” of national climate strategy: IBC
P&C Industry needs to “bridge gap in public acceptance” of national climate strategy: IBC.
Heather Kent on October 5, 2016
Climate adaptation is the most important, current pillar for the insurance industry, according to Craig Stewart, Vice–President, Federal Affairs, Insurance Bureau of Canada.
Speaking at the recent National Insurance Conference of Canada (NICC), Stewart said that, despite the ongoing development of a national climate strategy, a disconnection prevails with a significant portion of the Canadian public. This gap in public acceptance needs to be bridged by the P & C industry, if it is to successfully introduce product changes and advance mitigation efforts.
Peter Sousounis, Director of Meteorology, Research and Modelling Division, AIR Worldwide and a member of the Inter–Government Panel on Climate Change, addressed the question of whether climate change was causing large scale temperature, polar ice and sea level changes. “That is impossible to answer. A better question is: is climate change making events more extreme?”
A new science – Clinical Climate Attribution – created 10 years ago, suggests that overall confidence for extreme weather events is strongest where these events can be simulated in climate models, feature a long term historical record of observation and are linked to human–caused climate change through robustly simulated physical mechanisms.
Following the Louisiana floods in August, scientists have been working on simulations of that extreme event, when six months’ of normal rainfall fell in two days. The frequency of such events has increased up to six times since the 1900’s and the intensity by up to 25 times, Sousounis said. Modelling of these events is important to try and isolate their effects from those of greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
Erick Lachapelle, Assistant Professor, Director of undergraduates in political economy, University of Montreal, said that public understanding of climate science is limited and most Canadians are not willing to pay more for clean energy. Although four out of five Canadians are aware of climate change, for some the issue is perceived in shades of grey and not as black and white, Lachapelle said. From a policy and behavioural perspective, the challenges are greater when people are skeptical. He cited a range of six levels of belief in climate change from “existential” to “interventionists.” Interventionists aim to encourage people to act individually and support government policy on climate change. A 2015 survey revealed that only one in 10 people believed that they were at risk from climate change. Future generations, however, were seen to be potentially greatly affected.
Canada’s geography contributes to Canadian’s varying levels of buying in to climate change, as extreme events differ across the country, Lachapelle said. An urban–rural divide also exists with Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver having high numbers of climate change believers. The many uncertainties in climate science is also a factor, he said. “Greenhouse gases are invisible so assigning blame is difficult. Impacts are distant and uncertain and we are not as good at figuring out risks over the long term,” he explained. Lachapelle said that merging his work with the insurance industry, using EcoAnalytics in order to help determine which policy holders may need better coverage would be a positive step.
P&C Industry needs to “bridge gap in public acceptance” of national climate strategy: IBC
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