Event Date: February 27, 2025 - 2:30pm to 4:00pm
Location: FSS 5028, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa
Presented by CIPS and the International Political Economy Network (IPEN)
As social scientists continue to contend with almost ceaseless crises, scholars have undertaken an epistemic turn in International Political Economy (IPE) in a bid to deconstruct how knowledge is produced, legitimised and maintained. Yet, IPE has rarely considered the function ignorance plays in shaping our understanding of the economy. In this article, we look to begin to address this omission by drawing on original data on how the actuarial techniques employed by the insurance sector in the United Kingdom (UK) in both ‘pricing’ climate risks and articulating the sectors’s response to them. We propose the term anosognosia – understood as a knowledge deficit – as a form of ignorance to explain how climate risk is minimised or often omitted from actuarial estimations. We identify a successive three-step process in which anosognosia manifested in the financial sector’s approach to climate risk, manifesting first in the modelling and scenario production of futures they want to present as opposed to what more accurately reflects systematic climate risk. After constructing potential scenarios, we find a broadly held view in the sector that risks can be mitigated by diversifying asset portfolios and instead considering these risks as opportunities. Finally, our data shows that there is an expectation that, if all else fails, the state will underwrite stressed assets to avoid the risk of contagion in the financial system. By emphasising the practical utility of ignorance, we demonstrate that the insurance sector is anosognosic to the uncomfortable knowledge of climate risks.
Speaker:
Dr. James Jackson is a Hallsworth Research Fellow at SCI and the Politics department, researching the politics of the electric vehicle transition and the intersection of fiscal, monetary and climate policy. Before beginning this position previous position examined how COVID-19 and the inflation caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are affecting Net-Zero objectives in Australia, Canada and the UK. A joint project between the Sustainable Consumption Institute, the University of Manchester, the University of Melbourne and the University of Toronto, the research aims to quantify the impact of economic crises on decarbonising the economy and the implications for a just transition. James joined the institute after completing his PhD at the University of Sheffield and the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) where his thesis analysed the politics of the electric vehicle transition in Germany and the UK. He has held visiting positions at the University of Bergen (2022), the University of Toronto (2023) and the University of Melbourne (2024).
Moderator:
Ryan M. Katz-Rosene – Associate Professor, School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa and IPEN coordinator