Global finance and environmental politics - The insurance industry and climate change

This article outlines how insurance companies have so far responded to clim ate change. Such change threatens the viability of much of their business, by disrupting the actuarial data on which insurance risks are calculated. A t the same time, insurance companies are an important component of global f inance, and thus their political-economic power has led many observers to s uggest that their involvement in climate politics is encouraging from an en vironmentalist point of view. The article critically analyses whether such optimism is justified.