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On California Firestorms Ask: How Green is My Insurance Commissioner?

By Sara S. Nichols

Although the job of (statewide elected California) Insurance Commissioner is not often associated with environmental issues, both the current and the immediate past job holders ran green. With the Southern California firestorms highlighting the effect of global climate change on the possibility of disasters and their attendant insurance claims, one wonders, what will/have these insurance commissioners done to move the insurance industry into political/economic reality?

In Europe, the insurance industry has been a crucial partner with environmentalists to pursue sane environmental policies that stem the production of greenhouse gases, thereby slowing global climate change, and protecting their bottom line.

In the U.S., the insurance industry routinely acts in lockstep with the Chamber of Commerce to oppose environmental bills which inconvenience polluters.

Past (Democratic) Insurance Commissioner and current Lt. Governor John Garamendi wants to be governor of California. He calls himself an environmentalist and campaigns on the need to do something about global climate change. Yet, when he was Insurance Commissioner did he use his position to nudge the insurance industry out of its historically anti-environmental stance? I don't recall hearing about such efforts.

Of course in his current job, the rigors of whale-naming duties prohibit him from having much affect over environmental policy--but did he do it when he could?

Current (Republican) Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner also calls himself an environmentalist (increasingly a requirement for election to statewide office--the only two Republicans elected, Schwarzenegger and Poizner statewide positioned themselves credibly as environmentalists). Here's his chance to prove it.

Of course no regulator alone can be responsible for the overhauling the recalcitrant political habits of an entire industry, but they can use the bully pulpit to raise the issues, educate the industry as to their bottom line interests and make it inconvenient to continue to behave irresponsibly, for their shareholders, if not for their insured.

Sara S. Nichols is a dynamic public speaker who has appeared on Larry King, Jerry Springer, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer and talk radio. She lives in Sacramento and writes from time to time on politics on snicholsblog where this article first appeared. It is republished with her permission.

Posted on October 26, 2007

Comments

Sara: John Garamendi has had a great record on the environment over a long career. He is green from that standpoint, but not green from lack of experience.

As Lieutenant Governor, he sits on the State Lands Commission and has blocked LNG siting along the coast. He had a great voting record in the legislature. In 1995, President Clinton appointed him as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the number two position in the Department. There, he negotiated the Headwaters Forest Agreement, conducted the Cal-Fed water negotiations, and put an end to the dumping of nuclear wastes in the California Desert. Along with other key department deputies, he worked with Al Gore to prepare the American agenda for the Kyoto Climate Change Conference. He also advanced the protection of National Parks and negotiated the largest habitat conservation plans in the Western States.

I don't know about these green issues as Insurance Commissioner--and hadn't thought of that office from the standpoint that you raise in your article--which is very thought provoking. But I'd bet that he has a good record there as well and I'd be surprised if he had a bad one, as he has supported AB 32, our greenhouse gas reduction law, when it was passed last year when he was in the IC position.

Posted by: Frank D. Russo at October 26, 2007 08:37 AM

Exactly how is this fire a result of global warming? Is this fire unique than the past fires over the past 100 years? Were the Oakland fires, which I believe burnt more single family homes a result of global warming? Are Santa Ana winds a recent occurance that are unprecedented? I'm sorry, but every event involving mother nature is not the cause of the earth being an average 1 degree hotter over the past 100 years, and anyone saying that it is is incredibly naive or intellectually dishonest and lazy.

Posted by: pacificaharry at October 26, 2007 01:25 PM

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