Friends for a cause

AS THE earth grows warmer, the battle
between insurance and energy
industries is heating up. The insurance
executives have teamed up with
international climate change experts.
Around 60 big insurance companies
met recently in London to chalk
out ways of improving the management of environmental risks that
are costing their businesses huge
amounts of money. The insurance executives have adopted a paper seeking "a
substantial reduction" in the green-
house gas emissions which trap heat
in the atmosphere and add to global warming.

The paper comes at the right time
for climate change experts who
launched a report recently, which highlights the influence of human beings on
global warming. The largest contribution to global warming is made by carbon dioxide generated mainly by burning of fossil fuels.

The World Energy Council, which
represents the energy industries of 100
countries, has dismissed the report's
findings as unreliable. According to the
United Nations Environment Programme, a co-sponsor of the conference,
"Sixteen one-billion dollar-plus catastrophes linked to the environment
resulted in worldwide insured losses of
over us $50 billion".