climate changeEnvironmentFinance

Some thoughts on the ‘long-shot’

I recently re-watched The Big Short.

… and have, in many conversations, been testing out the idea that we are approaching a potential ‘market collapse’ around financial risk, particularly around environmental risk insurance. People have been nodding.

The idea being that major assets, infrastructure, cities, countries are becoming ‘uninsurable’.

The models are either ‘not good enough’ and therefore the premiums ‘too high’, or the models are ‘good enough’ and therefore the premiums ‘too high’ or uninsurable.

This makes me wonder if we need to invert the model: pre-insurance to invest in resilience rather than pay-when-broken.

So, how might we make that market work?

How would we lay the foundations for an investment at the scale of the Apollo Program + Manhattan Project + Marshall Plan?

How would we combine the intelligence of humans and machines (a current buzzphrase is ‘collective intelligence’), at-scale, to include everyone in the solution?

If we are going to enable hundreds of millions of people to enter the economy (e.g. digital-first, mobile financial services anchored around things like Open Banking), how can we ensure that those new economies are zero-carbon?

Might OERS be a starting point?