Climate change is not solely an environmental crisis.

EDITOR: Gunther Thallinger, board member of Allianz SE, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, argues that extreme weather disasters threaten the very viability of capitalism by undermining the insurance industry, the financial sector and ultimately, the entire market system.

In a recent article titled “Climate, risk, insurance: the future of capitalism”, he wrote: “Heat and water destroy capital.

Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. … The economic value of entire regions – coastal, arid, wildfi re-prone – will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like.”

To limit further atmospheric warming, he advocates urgently reducing and capturing carbon dioxide emissions. He asserts that technological solutions – solar, wind, battery storage, green hydrogen – already exist and must be rapidly deployed at scale. It’s important to look to independent organisations like those in the insurance industry to evaluate the threat posed by climate change. Because this industry depends on scientific evidence to assess risk, it is less amenable to politicised science.

Terry Hansen Milwaukee, Wisconsin