Lloyd’s boss demands action on climate change

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Governments and businesses must act now against climate change, and the United States needs a bigger public debate about its risks, the chairman of the Lloyd’s insurance market said.

Peter Levene warned that vast storms bigger than Hurricane Katrina are likely to batter the United States in coming years despite a relatively calm 2006 Atlantic hurricane season.

“Today the insurance industry faces the prospect of a 100-billion-dollar mega-catastrophe twice the size of Katrina,” Levene said in a speech at Washington’s National Press Club.

Levene, formerly a skeptic on climate change, runs the world’s biggest insurance market at London-based Lloyd’s.

AFP