Insurance companies have a role to play in helping to fight climate change, according to a local environmental activist.

Myles Darrell, Bermuda National Trust’s head of heritage, said: “Everyone has to be a part of the solution. It is very helpful when insurance companies share the data they obtained from catastrophe modelling systems with scientists at the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. That can put us in a better position to address climate change problems.”

He was responding to reinsurance company Axa XL’s latest Future Risk Report listing climate change as the world’s top perceived risk for the fourth year in a row.

The report’s findings were based on a global poll of 3,000 people, including business experts.

Ninety-one per cent of experts and 72 per cent of the general public felt insurers were important to managing risk.

“You cannot take this seriously enough,” Mr Darrell said. “Climate change is affecting all walks of life and all parts of life, including Bermuda.”

Axa’s data showed that while all age groups took climate change seriously, people under age 25 were more concerned.

This group ranked pollution as their third biggest concern, while it was the eighth ranking concern for older people. They also saw biodiversity and natural resources as the ninth biggest risk while it was a twelfth-place concern for everyone else.

This was in keeping with what Mr Darrell has seen working on environmental projects with volunteers of all ages.

“Young people are really aware,” he said. “The feeling is things are only going to worsen if we do not do something about this.”

Watching Hurricane Helene and then Hurricane Milton hit Florida in the last month was incredibly scary for Mr Darrell.

Hurricane Milton reached Category 5 strength over the Gulf of Mexico, but dropped to a Category 3 before first hitting Siesta Key, Florida, with 120mph winds on October 9. The storm came two weeks after Hurricane Helene hit the Sunshine State farther north with Category 4 winds.

“A Category 5 is something we have not seen yet in Bermuda,” Mr Darrell said. “We are more prepared than Florida but that would still be something that would be very concerning and have a detrimental impact if it happened here.”

In the report, Florent Lobligeois, Axa group head of natural perils risk management, said the impact of climate change differed regionally but there was a clear and obvious trend of natural perils strongly correlated to overall rising temperatures.

A study conducted by Imperial College London found that climate change caused by human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels, added billions of dollars to the cost of the last two Florida hurricanes.

So far, 268 deaths have been attributed to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.

“It is sad to see how many people lost their lives in Florida to a Category 3 storm,” Mr Darrell said. “I cannot imagine how much worse it would have been in a stronger category.”

In the Future Risks Report, geopolitical instability was perceived as the second biggest risk but was more of a concern in Europe than in other parts of the world.

Some survey respondents told Axa: “Geopolitical tensions continue to hamper any attempt for co-operation at a global level.”

Half of experts and 44 per cent of the general public polled said that globalisation was slowing down because of global political unrest.

Cybersecurity risk was the third listed emerging risk and artificial intelligence and big data the fourth.