Old-fashioned comedians joke about the insurance industry and its agents' fearsome ability to sell policies to the unwilling. While this doggedness has produced healthy profits for the industry and could represent a valuable asset in dealing with climate change, it has also led states to regulate the industry quite strictly. And federal laws prevent some transactions and require others—chief among them is the Bank Holding Company Act, which prevents insurers from entering the banking business and, likewise, stops bankers from offering insurance services and securities. Congress passed this law and others like it as the result of abuses that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s.20
Since then, though, some of the firewalls placed between these financial sectors have begun to crumble, as the world insurance industry has begun to restructure and—in other countries—privatize. Although skeptics warn that without adequate protections, these changes could threaten privacy and stifle innovation and efficiency, fans hail their capacity to produce innovative new financial products.21 Examples of new financial products on offer include the following:
The ability of the financial industry to offer more than in the past opens a broad range of products that can be structured to benefit both the environment and the renewable energy industry. While some groups are skeptical of any solutions involving big business, others disagree. For instance, in The Ecology of Commerce, Paul Hawken contends that only through the power of big business and market forces will we be able to overcome environmental problems: "Business is the problem and it must be part of the solution...It must, because no other institution in the modern world is powerful enough to foster the necessary changes."25
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