Okay, that’s crazy, right? But it’s not as far fetched at it sounds. Of course, in the end (and make no mistake about it: we ARE talking about the “end”), it’s all about money, which is not news to anyone. And insurance companies are in business to be profitable. A little disaster here, a major disaster there, raise everyone’s rates to cover your losses, yada yada yada. Anyone who has had a fender bender or a house fire knows that a) you’ll be covered, and b) your rates are going up. 

But what if there are very near-term scenarios (circa year 2040) which portend losses that simply cannot be covered…losses that spell the end of business as usual. And here, regardless of how you feel about insurance companies, you have to give them credit for valuing our SURVIVAL which is more than can be said about the fossil fuel industry. Lloyd’s of London recently looked into the extremely tenuous condition of humanity and guess what? They don’t like our odds. it appears that we are just 3 steps away from the collapse of civilization as THEY know it (in other words, the feasibility of making a buck off of our bad luck).

Insurance, and re-insurance companies, along with major financial institutions such as the United Nations, World Bank, and the IMF have been sounding alarms bells for several years now about the impacts of continuing our unabated burning of every last drop of fossil fuel; however, I do believe that the insurance industry, and in particular, Lloyd’s, is the clearest warning to date on just how precariously we are indeed “perched.” These types of reports ripple throughout financial markets and can dissuade investors from throwing money at risky, short-lived and possibly “stranded” fossil fuel assets.

Add into the (already unsavory) recipe for “Fossil Fuel Cookies of Death”

a dash of fossil fuel divestment, mix in lots of foot stomping by civilians across the world, sprinkle liberally with investor jitters, and set your oven to broil.

Or not.

We may not just be re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. But let’s be honest. This is TAKING TOO LONG. But the more that information like this is disseminated, the better our odds are.  And what are the odds? Not good. In fact, very bad. As the Heartland Institute, ALEC, Exxon Mobil, Koch bastards, Marc Morano, et al continue to yell above the Din of Despair that there is no such thing as global warming, many (most?) scientists privately believe that it’s too late. We are indeed locked in to decades or longer of warming that has not yet been realized.

But what to do? Give up? I will not. Not yet, at least. And when I do, you can find me on the ice, with my Bernie sticker on my helmet, playing hockey til the end.

But I am not ready to concede. Why not? Well, the odds that we are even HERE, the odds that intelligent life got a foothold on this gorgeous jewel of a Goldilocks Planet of ours, are so incredibly long that we just may be the only intelligent form of life in the universe. And as physicist Max Tegmark says, if we weren’t here to enjoy the view, it would all be such a terrible waste.