Amy Barnes

So what's any of this got to do with climate change?

Well, importantly, insurance only works while extreme weather remains a risk.

If it becomes a near certainty, insurance becomes unaffordable and potentially not available.

So we have an industry whose core competency is pricing risk, telling us that in places, the cost of risk is too high for people to pay.

And at the same time, we have a financial services industry that relies on insurance to provide loans, which in turn make the financial system work.

Now, the signals are really clear.

We're told that in Australia, by 2100, 1.3 million homes will be uninsurable due to extreme weather.

And in New South Wales, that's 90 percent of people's homes.

In New Zealand, 10,000 homes uninsurable by 2050.

And across the world, in Canada, the Bureau of Insurance says that nearly 10 percent of homes are already close to uninsurable and represent 90 percent of the industry's losses.

Why?

Extreme weather due to climate change.

Now, since the 1970s, the cost of extreme weather events has increased every decade.

Last year, the costs were 320 billion dollars, and the LA wildfires on their own, 150 billion dollars.

But it's not just severe losses.

Sticking in the US, last year, there were 27 incidents with costs of over one billion dollars.

That's more than two a month.

So the equation has flipped.

It's no longer just the losses of the few.

It's now the losses of the many.