Don’t Mess With Nature: The Meaning of Life

05/12/20 • 18 min

We need to start thinking about how life is connected with money. Why? Because unless we can find a better state of equilibrium between natural capital - that’s life on earth, and financial capital - that’s the money that makes the world go around, there’s a real danger that we’ll continue to finance ourselves into extinction.

After all, we all invest into health insurance and pensions for our own wellbeing. So why wouldn’t we consider environmentally minded companies which nurture the planet for our families and future generations? These are the issues which the financial sector has to grapple with.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Don't Mess with Nature: Rising Tides

Sea levels have been going up and down for millions of years - but why are we so interested in it now? Because over the last 150 years, sea levels have started to rise faster than ever before. Why? The world’s getting warmer. The CO2 that was locked up by nature in rock or other products is now being dug up and burnt, we’re burning the oil, we’re burning the coal, we’re burning the limestone to make cement. That CO2 is going back into the atmosphere, it’s happening super fast, our atmosphere is super sensitive and sea levels are rising.

And this is one of the problems of climate change. It’s like a punch that someone’s giving you. But it’s so slow, it’s like a punch in slow motion. So you don’t take it seriously. Until it hits you.

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Next Episode

Don't Mess with Nature: Thunder and Lightning

Over the last 50 years, catastrophic weather-related events have dramatically increased in frequency. Just to put it into perspective, in 2018, there were 42 catastrophic events that cost more than a billion dollars each. Why? The concern is that as the planet warms, the sea surface temperature rises. And even the smallest increase in sea surface temperature has the potential to significantly increase the strength of a hurricane. Just last year in Britain, storm Ciara and Dennis were estimated to cost around £350M in damage. This comes at a huge cost to insurance companies. A cost which ultimately gets passed on to us through increased insurance premiums.

But the question is, how are the insurance companies spending your money and mine on the premiums they collect? Are they in fact contributing to the problem? And that affects all our premiums. It's all tied to nature. That's why the one thing we all need to learn is that looking after nature is the best insurance policy you could ever have.

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