We Pay a High Price for Ignoring Clean Energy Sources

The chart accompanying Kathy M. Kristof’s “Shoring Up” (Personal Finance, May 1) accurately indicates that the insurance industry has suffered increasingly huge losses from weather catastrophes in recent years. The increase in frequency and intensity of such disasters is consistent with the projected impact of global warming. Human activities--the burning of oil, coal and gas--release greenhouse gases that cause global warming and severely disrupt normal climate patterns.

Through the 1980s, insurance payouts for weather-related losses averaged less than $2 billion a year, totaling $17 billion for the decade globally. But between 1990 and 1995 alone, that figure skyrocketed to a staggering $57 billion in loss claims. As a result, insurers are awakening to the threats of global warming and climate change.

Reflecting the growing concern among the industry, Franklin Nutter, president of the Reinsurance Assn. of America, said that climate change “could bankrupt the industry” and that “all policyholders pay for these losses through higher insurance premiums.”

The solution: replacing fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power. Such technologies are ready now and can breathe new life into our economy, while preventing further global warming and climate change.

The only barriers to implementing these solutions are political.

The best long-term insurance policy we have is to face up to the global climate threat by embracing the clean energy alternatives that are available now.

KALEE KREIDER

Climate campaign director

Greenpeace U.S.

Washington