David Cameron Rehashes Worn Out Insurance Argument

By Paul Homewood

 

 

In an interview in the Sunday Telegraph last week, (sorry, no link), David Cameron repeated the “It’s worth taking out insurance” line, regarding climate change. He says:

 

“If someone came to you and said there is a 95% chance that your house might burn down, even if you are in the 5% that does not agree with it, you still take out the insurance, just in case”

  

There are two fatal flaws in this argument.

 

1) The cost of the premium.

Would you pay £200,000 insurance premium every year for a house worth £100,000? Of course not.

Yet this is the logic of Cameron’s argument. The cost of acting “to stop climate change”, as far as the UK is concerned, is many times greater than any potential costs, which might otherwise arise. (Assuming there are any such costs at all, or indeed that there are no benefits).

 

2) What you can claim back

Would you pay, say, £500 to insure your £100,000 house, if the insurance company policy stated that they would only pay you back £10 if it burnt down? Of course not.

We know that, however much much the UK reduces its CO2 emissions, there will be no tangible effect either on global or UK temperatures.

In other words, we are paying into an insurance policy, that won’t pay anything back to us under any circumstance.

 

 

Cameron’s argument quite simply has no logic to it.