Are you as nervous as re-insurers about global climate change?

When the people who are paid to assess and manage risk start openly panicking about the perils of climate change, you know that the excrement isn’t far from hitting the air conditioning.

Reinsurers, the people who insure the insurance companies, are the folks who have the most on the line. And they’re starting to get nervous. "At Lloyds, we feel the effects of extreme weather more than most," Peter Levene, chairman of Lloyds of London, said in March. "We don't just live with risk -- we have to pick up the pieces afterwards." Lloyds predicts a hurricane will hit the US with twice the destructive price tag as Katrina and will thus bankrupt 40 insurers.

We’d do well to look at their anxiety as the canary in the coal mine. After all, reinsurers aren’t treehugging doomsday prophets.

Many have the vague feeling that maybe the weather is going to get flukier as the climate changes—and maybe even a little balmier. They think the climate, particularly something as innocuous as a 1 or 2 degree change in average temperature, doesn’t affect their lives. It reminds me of how people probably reacted to the stock market crash of 1929. “I don’t own stock, so what’s the big deal?”

The stakes really couldn’t be higher, particularly for you insurance agents. Take it from Lloyd: "The insurance industry must start actively adjusting in response to greenhouse gas trends if it is to survive."

If it is to survive. I hate to freak you out, Agent Blog reader, but we've got a pretty freaky situation on our hands.