PLEASE REPOST: Top insurer warns we're on track for 3°C (5.4F) warming… | Joe Romm, Ph.D.

PLEASE REPOST: Top insurer warns we're on track for 3°C (5.4F) warming where insurance and finance 'cease to function' and we can't 'adapt.' But the solutions are here. A Guardian story has elevated a must-read LinkedIn post by a top insurer who is warning that "we are fast approaching temperature levels—1.5°C, 2°C, 3°C—where insurers will no longer be able to offer coverage for" risks like floods, fires, extreme heat and other extreme events. Günther Thallinger, a board member of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurers, explains, "The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay. This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable" But "if insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property. Credit markets freeze. This is a climate-induced credit crunch." It doesn't just hit housing but also "infrastructure, transportation, agriculture, and industry. The economic value of entire regions—coastal, arid, wildfire-prone—will begin to vanish from financial ledgers. Markets will reprice, rapidly and brutally. This is what a climate-driven market failure looks like." He slams "the false comfort of 'adaptation'," since many risks cannot be adapted to "and as temperatures continue to rise, adaptation itself becomes economically unviable." https://lnkd.in/ecCvv_Hk He warns "Once we reach 3°C of warming, the situation locks in. Atmospheric energy at this level will persist for 100+ years due to carbon cycle inertia and the absence of scalable industrial carbon removal technologies. There is no known pathway to return to pre-2°C conditions." And we are headed towards 3C warming since, as I've noted many times, none of the top 10 GHG-emitting countries have policies and actions in place to keep warming below 3C. But at 3C, "risk cannot be transferred (no insurance), risk cannot be absorbed (no public capacity), and risk cannot be adapted to (physical limits exceeded). That means no more mortgages, no new real estate development, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function." He does note "The good news: we already have the technologies to switch from fossil combustion to zero-emission energy. Solar, wind, battery storage, ... electrification, grid modernization, demand-side efficiency—these are mature and scalable solutions." He included "green hydrogen" but I put in ellipsis since it's a dead end. See >>BOMBSHELL: "Just 1% of ALL projected green hydrogen production has a binding offtake agreement" with $500 to $1,250 per ton of CO2 abatement costs<< https://lnkd.in/egDYXGqg?