Thursday, April 21, 2011

A correction from Australia

We heard from Angus Trigg of Insurance Australia Group about a recent article, correcting a misimpression from the news story we linked to: "Your article, “Denial down under: Australian insurer rejects impact of climate change” on your blog presents a misleading view of our position on climate change.

The context of our comments were responding to the question of whether the recent concentration of severe weather in Australia can definitively be attributed to climate change. Our comment was: “It’s too early to say whether the recent severe weather events are or are not attributable to climate change. This will only become clear when viewed in the context of longer term trends. However it is certainly an unusual concentration of weather volatility.”

We accept that climate change is likely to mean that severe weather events are likely to increase. This is why, as a business, we have been actively supporting adaptation measures like stronger building standards, stricter planning and zoning requirements and investment in infrastructure to increase our community resilience. A recent example of our position on these issues is available here: http://www.iag.com.au/news/presentations/20110411_2_adapt_change.shtml."

Image of a kneaded eraser by Hariadhi, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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