MUNICH RE U.N. REPORT ESTIMATES WEATHER COST $60 BILLION IN 2003:

Delegates attending a recent meeting of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in Milan heard a report, prepared by Munich Re, estimating the cost of natural disasters, most of which were weather-related, was more than $60 billion in 2003, up from around $55 billion the year before. Approximately $15 billion of those were insured losses. The UNEP bulletin contained some impressive findings. Europe’s summer heat wave, which is estimated to have caused the deaths of 20,000 people, as well as serious losses to crops and livestock, is expected to have been the most costly single event with agricultural losses alone estimated to be more than $10 billion. The report also cited the floods along the Huai and Yangtze Rivers in China between July and September that damaged around 650,000 apartments with overall losses estimated at nearly $8 billion. In the U.S., tornadoes that hit the Midwest in April and May caused insured losses estimated at $3 billion. The UNEP stressed that the high economic losses are part of a worrying trend that is being linked with climate change. It called on “governments, business and industry to back emerging emissions trading markets as one way of tackling the crisis.” The findings are likely to increase the rancor involved in the debate over climate change between the U.S. and the rest of the world. According to the BBC, Sen. James Inhöfe, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said he was increasingly convinced that “global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people and the world.” As his views are more or less shared by the current administration, there’s little hope that the U.S. will back the U.N.’s environmental agenda any time soon.

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