A CNBC show interviewed Warren Buffett — and in the context of talking about insurance shares — the billionaire (and Bershire Hathaway shareholders) are smiling all the way to the bank. Climate scientists may be predicting disasters, but as far as insurance goes, nothing much had changed.
Interviewer: How has the latest rise of extreme weather events changed the calculus on Ajit Jain in reinsurance?
Warren Buffett: “The public has the impression, because there has been so much talk about climate, that the events of the last ten years have been unusual. …They haven’t. We’ve been remarkably free of hurricanes in the last five years. If you’ve been writing hurricane insurance it’s been all profit.”
Warren Buffett: “So far the effects of climate change, if any, have not affected… the insurance market.
It has made no difference. I calculate the probabilities in terms of catastrophes no differently than a few years ago… that may change in ten years.”
Warren Buffett: “I love apocalyptic predictions, because … they probably do affect rates…”
Warren Buffett: “Writing US hurricane insurance has been very profitable in the last five or six years… now the rates have come down and we’re not writing much, if anything, on Hurricanes in the US at all. The biggest cat risk right now.. I think is earthquakes in New Zealand.”
Watch the interview on Squawk Box CNB.
It’s worth watching. Even the interviewers are skeptics.
h/t Willie and the Wall St Journal.(Headlined: “Warren Buffett, Climate-Change Denier. The sage of Omaha punctures liberal myths.” So the phrase “climate change denier” is used with cachet here. How times change. No insult intended. Ouch. Soon, everyone will want to be one.My transcript (a bit rough, sorry).