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The protection gap

Ah, language… you’re we’re soaking in it.

A growing disparity between economic loses from natural disasters and the amount of those losses covered by insurance is bringing together some strange bedfellows. I know, the entire world is now one giant mixed metaphor:

Insured losses from natural catastrophes may reach $145 billion this year — well above the 10-year average — as population growth, urban sprawl and climate change combine to supercharge risks, according to an estimate in April from the Swiss Re Institute.

The rising costs make it essential that the insurance industry “reach out not only to regulators and supervisors, but also to broader policymakers, government departments outside of insurance, academia, and even customers to work together and figure out how to tackle this issue,” Ariizumi said.

Ariizumi spoke near Durban, South Africa, ahead of a panel focused on the protection gap on Thursday. The event, held alongside the G-20 finance chiefs’ meetings, is expected to be attended by World Bank President Ajay Banga and the chair of French insurer Axa SA.

To address losses from natural disasters, Ariizumi said various forms of collaboration are possible such as the public sector agreeing to take on part of the risk when an event is deemed too great for private financial institutions to handle the costs on their own.

Once again, no shade to Bloomberg – they’re just the messenger explaining this through their prism – but this article raises question about t-shirts that say climate change is too expensive to address already answered by those t-shirts.

And this is why, in order to have nice things, massive collection action collaborations by governments to help businesses, which include insurers and media companies alike, to change courses, practices, and tactics toward the betterment of all humans remains job one. We can come back around to it under other guises, but collaboration is socialism collaboration. One day, we’ll come around to that and see how silly all of this was.

And it would be best for everyone if that day is tomorrow.

Image: a corner of Dukes County from the sky, via.

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On Buying Green

That sounds a lot like On Golden Pond. And, with a little change of emphasis, it could be… Buying Green, Putting Green… Village Green. I love the village green. Anyway.

Here’s a piece about consumers buying green products, how we’re doing, why we’re doing it, etc. I don’t know how you read it without it reading completely weird. I mean what are we talking about?

  • “Dark green” consumers tend to be older, more well educated, and more affluent than “light green” consumers
  • They also tend to care more about what is in “green” products (all natural, organic, non-toxic) and how they are made (such as by socially responsible companies)
  • “Dark green” consumers also tend to be more thoughtful about their purchases, often planning them ahead of time. “Light green” consumers tend to be more impulsive, often buying green products out of curiosity

See? Totally weird; important (for me) to remember that this is not what we’ve come to – it’s just where we are now. Companies? Yes we consider them. But what are we buying when we purchase things? Must our achats symbolize our moral purity? Wait, before you answer that – one possible scenario:

Are we buying convenience? Durability? There’s a difference between, let’s say, buying cleaning products and jeans. If you’re buying clothes, you’re rifling through a whole number of characteristics, none of which likely have to do with sustainability. Or do they? Better-made clothes last longer. We might buy less of them. It’s a way… wait a minute. We weren’t even trying to be green – we just, hey… there are different ways to accomplish similar goals. Are there other reasons? Ewww. Can we not drive, buy local, eat well or hang out clothes to dry just because we like to do these things?

Even or especially with clothing, we don’t have to call it green or anything. But we do. Because the choice will help the environment and that’s why we would buy it… well no, it isn’t. The environment isn’t the only reason we would buy things that last longer, or buy less of them. Or shop in our downtown instead of W*lmart, or from farmers at a market. We do these things because we like to do them. They are meaningful in their own right. It’s a corporate world and we need the slogans. But our needs here in the 1st world are actually quite simple and directly correlated to things we like: we like to do things that are enjoyable. And have gotten off the path to enjoyable things for exactly to demonstrate the power of advertising.

So these things of value, to us, these are the benchmarks. Now, consider all the other stuff that we buy, and whether you think ‘buying green’ is necessary to change any of them.

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Unsubstantiated Claims

It was an organic indictment, grown up naturally around the tendency to overstate positive benefits and cash in on the trend that forms the mutually inclusive, double-fisted appeal of green. No one noticed until they came for Cheerios, and even though the floodgates reopen every now and then, no one’s yet asking what’s in all those meds everyone’s taking.

Now, via, our own Federal Trade Commission has charged a couple of companies with making false claims about touting the biodegradable nature of their products. Imagine that; almost like there was a government watchdog with the power to regulate things under its control.

Just beneath the question as to whether Moist Wipes are, in fact, biodegradable, lies the question as to whether Moist Wipes can be biodegradable. They (said cleanliness delivery system) come out of a plastic bottle; they’re already moist; you can wipe (away) stuff with them, inferring, I guess, that 1) the stuff goes somewhere and 2) a residue of demonstrable cleanliness remains. How does any of this come about? In what time frame should we consider how long any of the cds might stick around or take to go away by itself? Bonus: where will it go?

Underlying the growing concept of sustainability and various definitions of what it is, the list of conditions by which people enter into what has always been (though we have ignored it) the social contract of buying stuff will begin to be shaped by how it arrived and where will it go after use. Really, this is basic stuff. The supermarket is not a magic warehouse – things don’t just appear there. The constituent parts come from some place, often far away, and require assembly and perhaps others embellishments we should find objectionable. But, importantly, we can leverage these predilections to change more-elemental factors that determine what we see on the shelves.

Paying the full price means just that, and as we tag our objections to what we buy, we can (by no means an inevitable turn) adjust upward what we consume. This means to you what it means; your freedom is intact, we’re just attaching the whole story to what it means to be free. The economics of sustainability will be as much about pricing in the real costs – and becoming aware of them – as it is about innovative design.