Insuring a warmer world possible ... at 'right price'

Despite rising annual losses from extreme weather, Reuters reports that global reinsurance company Munich Re says it’s still possible — “at the right price” — to insure any region of the world against the catastrophic effects of climate change.

According to the firm, losses from natural disasters totaled more than a half-billion dollars in 2008, well over twice as much as in 1980. It added that climate change contributed at least in part to many of those losses.

As of today, “nowhere in the world is uninsurable,” Munich Re board member Georg Daschner told Reuters. Whether customers are willing to pay the likely price of such insurance, on the other hand, is another matter, he said.

He added that his company is looking at possible ways of reducing its exposure by passing on some risks to the capital market.

Losses from climate change already cost insurers “billions,” Daschner said, and those risks are likely to steadily change in coming decades.