Cooler Elites by DOUG HENWOOD
early fifteen years later, little has changed. The US insurance industry is mainly concerned with technicalities, while the Europeans sound alarms. A 2006 paper from the Insurance Information Institute emphasizes scientific uncertainty about the relation between climate change and storm frequency and severity, notes that there's no simple relation between storms and industry profitability, comforts readers with praise of the industry's "resilience"--and reminds them that they can always jack up premiums in dangerous areas ("where places, things, and people are expensive to insure, insurance will be expensive").
By contrast, Swiss Re, the reinsurance giant, opened a 2002 paper on the topic by noting the necessity "to prevent global warming from accelerating to such [a] degree that humans are no longer able to adjust themselves in time," which they identified as "a task for governments and the community of states." A former consultant to the US insurance industry, who quit in disgust, told me that European insurers are "run by smart people who care about science" whose governments have been prodding them into action, while their American counterparts are "bottom-line hacks" whose government has been just fine with their indifference.
[WS:] I wonder what accounts for this difference. I mean, why do European capitalists and American capitalists have such different reactions to the same problem? My hunch it is the difference in business cultures, but I wonder what others think.
Doug: enacted, it might not look like win-win. Few things annoy Americans more than higher energy prices, or being forced to take the train instead of the Escalade.
[WS:] Not just Americans, all people are very reluctant to change the way of life and thinking as they know it. It is human nature. Jared Diamond talks about it at length in his book on the subject (_Collapse_) citing examples of cultures that went extinct rather than changing their tradition-honored life styles. That is why we cannot count on popular movements to address the climate change problem. It must come from the top, and it will be very unpopular. That feeds right into you final conclusion that we have no other choice but to "count" on business interests to do something about the climate change.
Wojtek