2008 was a ‘Huge year for natural disasters’
The UK’s BBC News is reporting that 2008 was a ‘Huge year for natural disasters’.
The past year has been one of the most devastating ever in terms of natural disasters, one of the world’s biggest re-insurance companies has said.
Munich Re said the impact of the disasters was greater than in 2007 in both human and economic terms.
The company suggested climate change was boosting the destructive power of disasters like hurricanes and flooding.
It has called for stricter curbs on emissions to prevent further uncontrollable weather scenarios.
Although there were fewer “loss-producing events” in 2008 than in the previous year, the impact of natural disasters was higher, said Munich Re in its annual assessment.More than 220,000 people died in events like cyclones, earthquakes and flooding, the most since 2004, the year of the Asian tsunami.
Meanwhile, overall global losses totalled about $200bn (£137bn),
It’s the core job of insurance companies to make forecasts and to assess risk. The insurance companies were amongst the very first corporations to start ringing the alarm bells on human-induced global warming and the potential for consequential devastating climate change. Let’s do what we can to make 2009 the year the world steers onto a more sustainable track. — DS
