CAT bonds and talk of blocking the sun in summer of climate disasters

Plus, HSBC becomes first major UK bank to leave UN's net zero alliance

In today’s edition:

— Catastrophe bonds surge as climate talk turns desperate in summer of disasters

— HSBC becomes first major UK bank to exit net zero banking alliance

— The science behind the escalation of extreme weather: video

— More than 1,500 deaths in Europe tied to climate change so far this month

— Heat waves are not just becoming hotter, but longer, new study finds

Passengers were briefly stranded on New York subway carriages Monday as heavy rains caused flash flooding. Photo: Screengrab from social media video.

Amid the hysteria over who was to blame for the tragic Texas floods last week, some MAGA stalwarts howled that it must have been people trying to manipulate the weather through cloud seeding. While the talk was typically unhinged, the science behind the idea of geoengineering is becoming more mainstream.

As the U.S. reels from a summer of climate disasters, from Texas floods and fires in the Grand Canyon, to this week’s extreme rain and flooding in New York City, the lack of attention to climate change at the federal level has Wall Street worried the White House might soon paint itself into a corner on solutions.

A widely circulated note this week from ClearView Energy Partners said that while there is no indication anyone in the administration is pursuing geoengineering as a way to cool the planet by artificially dimming the sun, there is risk that the controversial science will become more of an option as disasters rise.

Issuance of catastrophe bonds, a niche financial instrument that allows insurers to dump their environmental risk on investors who bet nothing is going to happen, have hit a record this summer as disasters pile up. According to the Financial Times, quoting data provider Artemis, more than $18.1 billion of CAT bonds have been issued so far this year, up from $17.7 billion in all of last year.

As we’ve said for some time, world governments are moving much more slowly to mitigate climate change than the pace of global warming itself. As the examples of flooding, fire and extreme heat pile up, and human tragedy along with them, more and more experimentation with geoengineering is occurring. The development of AI to help run models on the experiments will only increase that.

Geoengineering didn’t cause the Texas floods. But the idea that we might cause further tragedy by a mistake of our own making should not be ignored. As our options dwindle — in many ways also at our own making — it is inevitable that we’ll turn to our technology to try to change nature. That’s what investors are starting to bet on.

Don’t forget to contact me directly if you have suggestions or ideas dcallaway@callawayclimateinsights.com.

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HSBC tower, London.

HSBC joins parade of major banks exiting UN net zero alliance