fossil fuels
'Insure Our Survival': XR Launches Campaign at British Insurance Industry Awards Night
"We left the leading lights of the industry in no doubt about what they need to do: Stop insuring new oil, gas, and coal and focus on underwriting renewable energy," one activist said.
Key industry players arriving at London's Royal Albert Hall Wednesday night for the British Insurance Awards were met with a warning: Stop underwriting new oil, gas, and coal projects or face direct action from Extinction Rebellion.
Climate activists greeted the insurers with signs, photographs of extreme U.K. flooding, protest music, performance art, and business cards announcing XR's new "Insure Our Survival" campaign to pressure the industry away from backing fossil fuels.
"This is just the beginning," Insure Our Survival spokesperson Alex Penson said in a statement. "Thousands of XR activists stand ready to focus their nonviolent direct action energy on the insurance firms who are greenlighting the climate crisis by providing fossil fuel crooks with the insurance they need to dig and drill for oil, gas, and coal."
"It's time for insurers to use their superpower or be held responsible when all of our children face a future like the children in the photographs we showed at our protest,"
The insurance industry has emerged as a target of the climate movement in recent years, as advocates point out that new fossil fuel projects would not be able to move forward without it.
"The insurance industry has a superpower," Penson said. "At a stroke, it could stop the fossil fuel crooks in their tracks and save the lives of billions of people threatened from the worst-case climate scenarios that scientists are saying are increasingly possible."
However, to date the industry has not chosen to use that power. According to the most recent report from the global Insure Our Future campaign, not one of the 30 major insurance firms it analyzed in 2023 had policies in line with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. The insurers included in the U.K.-based Lloyd's market were the leading fossil fuel insurers, Insure Our Future found, earning $1.6-2.2 billion in premiums from oil, gas, and coal in 2022.
"It's time for insurers to use their superpower or be held responsible when all of our children face a future like the children in the photographs we showed at our protest," Penson continued, "struggling to survive in barely habitable countries haunted by crop failures, malnutrition, deadly storms, floods, and heatwaves."
At Wednesday's event, XR activists held up photos taken by photographer Gideon Mendell, showing massive flooding in the U.K. that has been made worse by the climate emergency. They also held up signs reading, "Stop Insuring New Fossil Fuels" and "Insure Our Survival."
(Photo: Extinction Rebellion)
At the sound of a violin, XR's Oil Slickers—activists draped in black cloth to resemble an oil spill—glided around the insurance luminaries as they approached the hall for the industry's annual awards ceremony.
(Photo: Extinction Rebellion)
A choir also sang a song to the tune of "Imagine," including the line, "Imagine all insurers, fighting for us all."
"Last night we challenged insurers having a good time and congratulating each other on their good work at the Royal Albert Hall to face up to some uncomfortable truths—that some of their work leads to flooded homes and wrecked lives for their customers facing more and more climate crisis-driven extreme weather events," Penson said.
The activists also distributed business cards to the attendees warning them that, if they continued to back new fossil fuel projects, XR would target them with direct action designed to hurt both their reputations and their bottom line.
Pension said: "We left the leading lights of the industry in no doubt about what they need to do: Stop insuring new oil, gas, and coal and focus on underwriting renewable energy to speed a just transition to a low or no-carbon economy."
XR's U.K.-based Insure Our Survival campaign emerged from the global Insure Our Future campaign, and in particular an international week of action it organized in late February and early March, including events in London and around the U.K.
About a month after the protests, Zurich Insurance announced that it would no longer underwrite new oil and gas projects.
Sierra Signorelli, Zurich's chief executive of commercial insurance, said at the time that Zurich took the action in keeping with its goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
"Further exploration and development of fossil fuels isn't required for the transition," Signorelli said. "We think it's the right time to evolve our position."
Insure Our Survival campaigner Lucy Porter said that since the spring, many insurance employees, in both senior and junior positions, had spoken to XR saying they supported a move away from backing climate-polluting projects.
"We intend to work with them to make insurance part of the climate solution, not part of the problem, and we invite other people in the industry to contact us and work with us," Porter said.
Porter continued, "To those who continue to put their profits before a livable planet we say: We will hold you accountable through an escalating campaign of nonviolent direct action across the country."
'Apocalyptic Scenes': Hurricane Beryl Leaves 'Complete Devastation' in Its Wake
"What we see here are the consequences of a rampaging climate change," the prime minister of one impacted country said, as the storm now bears down on Jamaica.
Hurricane Beryl—the earliest Category 4 and Category 5 storm to ever form in the Atlantic Basin—killed at least seven people as it tore through the southeastern Caribbean nations of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada on Monday, leaving behind devastation that the leaders of both countries compared to "Armageddon."
Scientists say that the record-breaking storm intensified so rapidly and so early in the season due to above-average ocean temperatures heated primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
"What we see here are the consequences of a rampaging climate change," Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves toldDemocracy Now! on Wednesday morning. "We are in the era of the Anthropocene, and the developed countries—the major emitters—are not taking this matter seriously."
"Big Oil must be held to account for worsening extreme weather disasters."
Beryl made landfall on Carriacou Island in Grenada at around 11:00 am EDT on Monday as a Category 4 storm before strengthening to a Category 5 later in the day. With winds blowing as high as 150 miles per hour, it was the strongest hurricane to hit the Grenadines since at least 1851.
The storm flattened Carriacou in half an hour, Grenadian Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said in a press briefing late Monday.
"Having seen it myself, there is really nothing that could prepare you to see this level of destruction," Mitchell told reporters. "It is almost Armageddon-like. Almost total damage or destruction of all buildings, whether they be public buildings, homes, or private facilities. Complete devastation and destruction of agriculture, complete and total destruction of the natural environment. There is literally no vegetation left anywhere on the island of Carriacou."
The hurricane also pummeled the Grenadian island of Martinique. On the two islands, which are home to around 6,000 people, the storm damaged or destroyed 98% of structures, including Carriacou's marinas, airport, and main hospital, The New York Times reported. It also wiped out electricity and communications on the two islands, damaged crops, downed trees and power lines, and flattened Carriacou's mangroves.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the hardest-hit islands were Canouan, Mayreau, and Union Island, where 90% of homes were flattened or seriously damaged, according toThe Guardian. The outlet said social media footage of the damage showed "apocalyptic scenes."
Speaking on Democracy Now!, Gonsalves compared conditions in the south of the country to "Armageddon."
"Union Island is flattened," he said, adding that everyone on Union and Mayreau were homeless.
One woman who survived the storm described the experience to Vincentian journalist Demion McTair, saying, "Just imagine stoves flying in the air, house flying, lifting up, tearing apart, and just going in the wind. Just like that… Just imagine."
Despite the devastation, the death toll has remained low for now, with three reported dead in Grenada, one in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and three in Venezuela, according to The New York Times.
However, the task of rebuilding from the storm will be "Herculean," Gonsalves told Democracy Now!, adding that he estimated the damage was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
"We are in a sense going up a down escalator," he said. "Every time we make some progress, we get hit by these natural disasters and we have to start afresh."
Yet, given the role that the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis plays in supercharging storms and hurricanes, these disasters expose the deep guilt of powerful corporations who have profited from the continued consumption of coal, oil, and gas.
"Seriously, at what point do we get crimes against humanity trials for the fossil fuel execs and economists, like Nobel winner William Nordhaus, who minimized climate impacts for decades?" climate advocate Julia Steinberger wrote on social media in response to the storm's devastation.
Greenpeace International agreed.
"Big Oil must be held to account for worsening extreme weather disasters," the group wrote on social media.
Both Gonsalves and Mitchell criticized wealthier nations for leaving Caribbean countries to bear the brunt of a crisis they did little to cause.
In Monday's press briefing, Mitchell said he expected recovery to cost tens of billions of dollars and called for climate justice:
We are no longer prepared to accept that it's OK for us to constantly suffer significant, clearly demonstrated loss and damage arising from climatic events and be expected to rebuild year after year while the countries that are responsible for creating this situation—and exacerbating this situation—sit idly by with platitudes and tokenism.
Grenada's economy, Grenada's environment, both physically built and natural, has taken an enormous hit from this hurricane.
It has put the people of Carriacou and Petit Martinique light years behind, and they are required to pull themselves by the boot strap, on their own.
This is not right, it is not fair, and it not just.
Mitchell promised to establish a task force to address the issue involving other small island developing states and the international community.
Gonsalves, speaking from his residence late on Monday, said that developed countries who have contributed the most to the crisis were "getting a lot of talking, but you are not seeing a lot of action—as in making money available to small-island developing states and other vulnerable countries."
He also referred to the United Nations climate negotiations, or COPs, as "largely a talkshop."
He expressed hope that seeing such a strong hurricane form so early in the season "will alert them to our vulnerabilities, our weaknesses and encourage them to honor the commitments they have made on a range of issues, from the Paris accord to the current time."
However, he also expressed concern that the climate crisis was not a larger point of discussion in the upcoming U.K. elections, or in other elections worldwide this year.
"The same thing is happening in other parts of the election in Western Europe and the United States as countries move to the right," Gonsalves said. "It's a terrible time for small-island developing states and vulnerable countries."
Meanwhile, Beryl's potential path of destruction is not over, as it approaches Jamaica as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of up to 140 miles per hour, the National Weather Service (NWS) wrote at 2:00 pm EDT Wednesday.
"We are very concerned about a wide variety of life-threatening impacts in Jamaica."
"On the forecast track, the center of Beryl will pass near or over Jamaica during the next several hours. After that, the center is expected to pass near or over the Cayman Islands tonight or early Thursday and move over the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico Thursday night or early Friday," NWS said.
While the agency predicted the storm would weaken somewhat over the next two days, it "is forecast to be at or near major hurricane intensity while it passes near Jamaica during the next several hours and the Cayman Islands tonight or early Thursday."
"We are very concerned about a wide variety of life-threatening impacts in Jamaica," AccuWeather's chief meteorologist Jon Porter said, adding that Beryl was "the strongest and most dangerous hurricane threat that Jamaica has faced, probably, in decades."
Oliver Mair, Jamaica's consul general in Miami, toldThe Washington Post that the hurricane was "almost like a game-changer."
"To have this size hurricane so early in the season, it's frightening," Mair said.
'Historic' Category 5 Hurricane Beryl Offers Terrifying View of Future
"Beryl isn't 'unbelievable,'" one expert said. "it's what happens when you heat up the planet with fossil fuel pollution for decades."
As Hurricane Beryl barreled toward Jamaica on Tuesday after killing at least four people in the Caribbean's Windward Islands, climate scientists warned the record-breaking Category 5 storm is a present-tense example of what's to come on a rapidly heating planet.
Even before the Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted an 85% chance of above-normal activity and 17-25 total named storms this year. Matthew Cappucci, a meteorologist for The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang, highlighted some records Beryl has already broken.
"There is a strong, well-documented link between the effects of human-induced climate change and the development of stronger, wetter storms that are more prone to rapidly intensify," he wrote Tuesday. "Beryl sprung from a tropical depression to a Category 4 hurricane in just 48 hours, the fastest any storm on record has strengthened before the month of September."
Beryl is also the earliest Category 4 and 5 hurricane on record in the Atlantic, Cappucci pointed out. Previously, the earliest storm to reach the top level of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale was Emily, in mid-July of 2005.
The Capital Weather Gang reported that Beryl "strengthened more Monday night, its peak winds climbing to 165 mph. It has surpassed Emily (2005) as strongest July hurricane on record. It's early July but Atlantic is acting like late August."
Certified consulting meteorologist Chris Gloninger emphasized that "the climate crisis has led to well-above-average ocean water temperatures and helped this storm explode."
As Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Potsdam University explained: "The heat in the upper ocean is the energy source for tropical cyclones. This heat is at record level, mainly caused by emissions from burning fossil fuel. That's why an extreme hurricane season has been predicted for this year. It's off to a bad start!"
Colorado State University meteorologist Philip Klotzbach on Monday shared graphics showing that "Caribbean ocean heat content today is normally what we get in the middle of September."
While some expressed disbelief over the storm, CNN extreme weather editor Eric Zerkel stressed that "Beryl isn't 'unbelievable' or 'defying all logic,' it's what happens when you heat up the planet with fossil fuel pollution for decades. The oceans store roughly 90% of that excess heat. The ocean is as warm as it typically is... when Category 4 storms form. June is now August."
Acknowledging Beryl's strength, Steve Bowen, a meteorologist who serves as chief science officer at the global reinsurance firm Gallagher Re, concluded that "this is a massive warning sign for the rest of the season."
Looking beyond this hurricane season, which ends in November, University of Hawaii at Mānoa professor and [C]Worthy co-founder David Ho said, "Let's remember that things are just going to get [worse] as we continue to consume nearly 100 million barrels of oil every day."
The "historic" storm is sparking calls for action to phase out fossil fuels across the globe. Noting how Beryl "is breaking records and leaving a trail of destruction throughout the Caribbean," the U.S.-based Sunrise Movement argued that "we must prosecute Big Oil for their role in causing devastation like this."
In response to a climate scientist who shared a photo of some damage Beryl has already caused, Rahmstorf expressed hope that people around the world won't "wait with voting for climate stabilization until extremes hit their homes."
Beryl made landfall Monday as a Category 4 hurricane on Carriacou, a Grenada island, and also affected St. Vincent and Grenadines. According toThe Associated Press, at least four people were killed.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Tuesday afternoon that on its current path, "the center of Beryl will move quickly across the central Caribbean Sea today and is forecast to pass near Jamaica on Wednesday and the Cayman Islands on Thursday. The center is forecast to approach the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico on Thursday night."