[ExI] Climate Change - Follow the money

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2013-09-27 09:53, BillK wrote:
> What is the first industry affected by climate change?
> The Insurance industry. And they are reacting to protect their bottom line.

I can attest to that. Yesterday I was at a meeting of some of the major 
reinsurance players: we were looking at emerging risk. Climate change is 
one of the top three issues on their radar, so obvious that its 
inclusion did not even merit much discussion.

Of course, from an insurance perspective the important risks are those 
you lose money from if you do not pay attention, not necessarily the 
biggest ones. To them emerging risks are risks that do not stay the 
same, which typically spells trouble. This is why longevity was actually 
a risk in the discussion: everybody around the table  liked it 
personally, but if the model of how much life extension we get is wrong, 
then money will be lost. Climate is nasty because of its uncertainty: 
estimating how it changes risks is very hard, and it affects lots of 
domains. Worse, it might introduce correlations we do not expect, the 
bane of insurance.

Happy to say that some transhumanist topics are on their radar.

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University