VISCOUNT RIDLEY WRITES IN REACTION :
Biodiversity threat won’t be tackled by alarmist biologist hype and dismantling capitalism
Humpback whales were down to a few thousand in the 1960s and listed as “endangered”. In 1996 as the population grew, they were downgraded to “vulnerable”. In 2008 as they became numerous, they were downgraded again to “least concern”. Today there are 80,000 of them, they are back to pre-exploitation densities in many parts of the world, and groups of up to 200 are sometimes seen feeding together, a success unimaginable when I was young.
Once upon a time there was a penguin oil industry, but as each King Penguin yields but a pint, the bizarre Victorian biofuel was driven to extinction when kerosene came along. Today, the penguins mortal enemies are mice, not men-- their breeding grounds on chilly Southern islands like Macquarie have been overun by shipwrecked rodents. Conservationists have deployed an assortment of better mousetraps in the species' defense, but while whale is still on the menu in locales distant as Japan, Orkney and St. Vincent, penguin oil filling stations are hard to find.The same is true of many previously exploited species such as fur seals, elephant seals, king penguins and more.
ELSWHERE IN THE SAME ISSUE :
Central bankers are waking up to the financial risks of climate change
BY IAN STEWART / 7 MAY 2019
Last month the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, issued a stark warning about the impact of climate change: “If…companies and industries fail to adjust to this new world, they will fail to exist”. Mr Carney’s statement was co-signed by the chair of the Network for Greening the Financial System, a coalition of 36 central banks, including the People’s Bank of China. The Network helps central banks measure and mitigate the risks to the financial sector posed by climate change. Last month’s statement signals that climate change has well and truly arrived as an issue for central bankers...
Climate change is a quite different category, but one that now commands the attention of central bankers. The Bank of England has identified three channels through which climate change threatens financial stability.
First, through the damage to property, trade and infrastructure trade from more frequent and severe weather. The losses, insured and uninsured, and the impact on future insurance premiums, are potentially enormous. A recent report by Swiss Re found that natural disasters in 2017 and 2018 alone cost $219 billion, a record... Another insurer, AXA, warns that the industry may simply be unable to cope with the scale of the risks. It says that if temperatures were to rise by more than 4 degrees centigrade by the end of this century the world would become “uninsurable”.
The second channel is so-called transition risk, where an abrupt and disruptive shift to a low carbon economy hits the financial system and the economy. In such a situation energy costs would soar, swathes of the capital stock would be rendered obsolete...
The third channel identified by the Bank is through businesses facing demands for compensation. Individuals or groups who suffer as a result of climate-related events may seek to claim against companies they deem responsible... Earlier this year Californian utility PG&E filed for bankruptcy in what the Wall Street Journal dubbed “the first climate-change bankruptcy, probably not the last”. The company faced huge potential liabilities resulting from wildfires that swept the state in 2017 and 2018. Victims of the fire claim PG&E’s equipment and maintenance work failed to deal with the growing threat by dry weather.
