Climate & Environment

John Gibbons: Could insurers be the ones to make fossil fuel giants listen on climate risk?

The insurance sector, dubbed the Achilles heel of the fossil fuel industry, is in crisis due to the increasing frequency of climate-fuelled extreme weather events – something energy giants may no longer be able to ignore

Under water: the penny is slowly dropping that the biggest existential threat facing the entire insurance industry is the rapid destabilisation of the global climate system as a result of fast-rising carbon dioxide levels. Picture: Getty

So far this year, the world has been riven with war and economic uncertainty in Europe, famine and drought in Africa and record-breaking extreme weather right across the northern hemisphere.

Yet for the global energy sector, 2022 has been another annus mirabilis. While consumers and many businesses have been severely squeezed by soaring energy prices, fossil fuel energy corporations have raked in massive windfall profits in recent months.

A study published earlier this year based ...