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IOS Strategy and Aims

Insure Our Survival is a national campaign to demand the insurance industry pull the plug on the fossil fuel criminals who are drilling and pumping the oil and gas products that will fry our futures - if we let them.

In February 2024, thousands of us took to the streets in the City of London and towns and cities across the country in an Insurance Week of direct action, Insure Our Future. This climaxed with giant global insurer Zurich bowing to our sustained pressure and announcing they are pulling out of insuring all new oil and gas projects.

We are building on that major win with a sustained and escalating campaign, Insure Our Survival. and we welcome everyone and every part of everyone - whether new to activism, returning or taking action with another aligned group.

Focusing our rebel creativity and courage, and working alongside an alliance of other seasoned campaigners and movements, we are targeting general insurers, brokers. reinsurers and underwriters with high, medium and low-risk actions and powerful storytelling around a single demand: stop insuring all new oil, gas, and coal projects and infrastructure.

But we won’t stop there. Our ultimate aim is to force all insurers, reinsurers and underwriters to quit the fossil fuel industry completely and for good.

Insurance action works. Insurance is Winnable

We showed in early 2024 that direct action by XR against Insurers can not only get them out of specific Fossil Fuel expansion projects, such as Cambo, EACOP, Rosebank and West Cumbria Coal mine, but also move them to rule out insuring Fossil Fuel expansion going forwards as Zurich did globally following direct action by XRUK this Spring.

After a one-rebel occupation of their lobby in London, Zurich Global’s CEO actually emailed XR’s actions team. Which was a first!! One month later they announced they are getting out of insuring any new Fossil Fuel projects.

As such, Insure our Survival’s strategy is at the ambitious end: to get more and more insurers out of covering (aka “underwriting”) Fossil Fuel expansion or ‘carbon bomb’ projects. Forever.

Our Objective

Using this strategy, we have one overriding and clear objective:
That sustained direct action from XR & friends will get companies to stop insuring new or expanding oil, gas & coal projects. and our goal for this next phase is that this happens for at least:

  • 1 x ReInsurer
  • 3 x Underwriters
  • 1 x Broker
  • 1 x General Insurer
Keeping it In the Ground

Insurance is the Achilles’ Heel of Fossil Extraction. Without insurance they can’t drill, mine, transport or refine.

Even better burning Fossil Fuels & overheating planet Earth is now increasing the risks of Insurance firms going bankrupt, and they know this better than anyone. Many are ready to move out of Fossil Fuels , they just need a good push.

What XR brings to the party is of course direct action, combining lobby occupations and mass participation action in February 2024 with 'Insure our Future'. These proven tactics led to successful actions in London and around the UK.
So let’s bring it!

FAQs
Why rule out insuring ALL new Fossil Fuel projects rather than specific ones?

Insure our Survival has set the strategy to use our direct action impact to move insurers out of all new Oil, Gas & Coal projects rather than get them to rule out specific projects. This is the more ambitious goal and has far simpler messaging. It is also a development that carries more ‘target threat’ in that Talbot Underwriting / AIG ruling out only EACOP will not stop us coming to visit.

This raises the costs for every new Fossil Fuel project on Earth for every insurer we move.

With over 100 insurance firms involved and hundreds of potential projects we need to move firms out of insuring all new Fossil Fuels projects as soon as possible to save the most carbon and the most frontline damage and fights. Going about this project by project as is currently the way its happening will mean we’re always fighting the next project.

Many major projects have an activist group pressuring insurers already, such as StopEACOP, StopRosebank and WestCumbriaCoal as well as the Insure our Future network across all of them, and we will work with them wherever possible.

Don’t Insurers need to get out of Oil, Gas & Coal entirely?

Yes. Yes they do.

We have set the goal of moving more and more out of these new Fossil Fuels projects, these carbon bombs, as stage one on the path to Insuring our Survival. Ultimately we are clear and the science is clear that they need to stop insuring all Oil, Gas & Coal.

Stopping insuring new Fossil Fuels is easier than cancelling coverage already happening for the target insurers, but it also leads them to setting a policy, as Zurich and Aviva have, which we can then push them to apply to ‘renewals.’ Which will be much easier once they have that policy and have stopped insuring adding even more carbon emissions via new projects.

Step one: get Insurer XYZ to set a strict policy excluding new Oil, Gas & Coal Step two: get them to apply that same strict policy to contract renewals

We need as many rebels taking as much insurance action as possible now to move insurers along this path in a timeframe that makes a difference to when and how we cross 2 degrees.

Do we even need Insurers? Sadly yes, any decarbonised future needs (some of) them.

As well as insuring pipelines and oil rigs and supertankers these same firms also insure desalination plants, public transport infrastructure, solar and wind farms, and many other things humanity needs and will need more of in a warmer and decarbonising world.

If we are to undertake an ambitious transformation of societies the projects will need the risk assessment and management expertise that only these firms have.

Aren’t they just like the Banks?

Not quite. They have to accurately model the real world and make decisions based on the physical realities, rather than the markets, or lose their shirts.

Of all the financial status quo firms the insurers are not just the ones we need the most for any transition, they are also the only ones that actually need to deal with the real world. To price any big infrastructure or even household/car insurance they offer they have to stay up to date with the climate science and model the levels of expected weather and social damage the planetary warming is likely to bring, as accurately as possible. Getting that wrong means they could, probably would go bankrupt.

So of all the major corporations Insurers have the best models of the damage, social upheaval and death tolls we will face as the planet overheats further.

This is why the price of insurance at all levels is going up: all the risks are rising fast, but the uncertainty is rising even faster. Insurers love risk that they can accurately model - it’s how they make money - but uncertainty on those risks is how they lose money and even go extinct themselves.

So for insurers getting out of Fossil Fuels ensures their survival too.

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