Action: Insure Our Survival Wave of Action Sep 8 - 22: Do It from Home
Insure Our Survival: A Sustained Campaign
This July, the Insure Our Survival campaign was one year old, and turned up the pressure on the fossil fuel insurers who are enabling climate breakdown. From our homes and on the streets across the UK, we reinforced the message that the public demands the insurance industry stops insuring new fossil fuels that will wreck the lives of our children and grandchildren.
September brings a coordinated wave of international action from 8th-22nd September, which will sweep around the globe, from Europe, to the Americas, Africa and Asia.
It's objectives? To expose insurance companies who are fuelling both climate chaos, and violent repression, and to amplify the voices of those most affected. Campaigners will apply pressure on the potential insurers of at least 425 carbon bomb projects currently planned or under construction, as well as companies complicit in supplying tools of occupation, surveillance, and state violence.
Take our 2 minute Risky Business Insurance Quiz to discover the facts, and find out why you should get involved.
This page gives tips on how you can join the action from your sofa, on the bus, or wherever you are, to demand the industry Insure Our Survival NOW!
Why insurance?
Insurance is the Achilles’ Heel of fossil fuel extraction and international arms. Without insurance fossil fuels won’t be drilled, mined, transported or refined, and weapon production won't happen, because big businesses don’t want to expose themselves to the risk of a project failing.
Just 20 companies insure 70% of fossil fuel projects, and a large number of these companies are based in the UK. Find out the facts with this 2 minute quiz.
The insurance industry is rapidly becoming our best unintentional messenger to the world that climate change is real, because they are having to deal with what is actually happening as climate-related risks increase. For all the denial from the fossil fuel industry, insurers are having to pay out more and more in claims from extreme weather, increasing premiums, tightening underwriting standards and withdrawing from whole sectors altogether, leaving homes and businesses exposed to complete ruin.
Insurance companies know that climate change is increasing their risk of going bankrupt. Many are ready to move out of fossil fuels, they just need a good push to help them crack under pressure when faced with public scrutiny, and reputational damage.
Insurance action works!
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 and Rosebank, 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.
All action contributes to slowing down the fossil fuel companies. Every time another insurance company pulls out of insuring the industry, competition is reduced and prices go up.
Thanks so much to everyone who got involved in July. Together Digital Rebels created social media storms for Marsh and The Royal Albert Hall, sent mass emails, phoned Marsh to ask them to cut ties with EACOP and fossil fuels, and amplified actions happening across our regions and nations.
👉 You can get involved from home this September: scroll down to find out how.
👉 Find and support your local openly organised action on the Rebel Toolkit.
Join us from home
to add pressure and spread the message
#InsureOurSurvival
12th September
Social Media Action
Join us to post directly to AXA and AIG, to expose the facts and connect the dots between their work, war and climate chaos.
Find examples posts and images you can use, or create your own to share on X, Instagram and Facebook.
LinkedIn Action
Contact AXA on LinkedIn, the popular platform for insurance employees, where we can invite engagement.
Use our sample comments to write on specific AXA LinkedIn posts with Chilli:
https://xrb.link/s4jT8d2
https://xrb.link/gi9Nq3olE8
https://xrb.link/w33A4b
TIP: When finding your own posts, choose those that are ironic and hypocritical. When commenting, it's best to focus on a tone of voice that is approachable 'not shouty' for this platform to encourage engagement.
(AIG LinkedIn posts have had their comments turned off!)
Email AIG and AXA
👥 Send an email in a few clicks with Chilli
AIG email: Click here
AXA email: Click here
If you'd rather not use Chilli to send your emails to AXA and AIG, here's the email text that you can copy and paste, and even create bespoke (and polite!) version.
Thank you!
Emails
AXA:
To:
investor.relations@axa.com
commercialcomplaints.ins@axa-insurance.co.uk
actionnaires.web@axa.com
Subject:
AXA lead us into a liveable future.
To the executives of AXA,
I am emailing today to implore you to end all underwriting and investment in fossil fuel expansion, arms companies, and institutions complicit in genocide. You have the power to stop this destruction tomorrow — and remain profitable. Yet so far, you choose to bankroll collapse.
Right now, AXA is not a company protecting lives, it is a company facilitating death on a planetary scale.
You insure and have insured the very “carbon bomb” projects that scientists say will tip us past safe climate limits — projects that poison rivers, displace families, destroy ecosystems, and lock in emissions for decades to come. You profit from insuring fossil fuel giants like Shell, enabling destruction from Colombia to Texas to Argentina. You do this knowing full well it accelerates climate breakdown that threatens billions of lives.
You also profit from war. AXA has invested in and insured arms companies and banks directly complicit in Israel’s war crimes — financing weapons and infrastructure that have fuelled the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Whether you dropped some of these holdings under pressure or not, the damage is done. The blood money is in your accounts. You have already chosen profit over Palestinian lives.
This is not about a single deal here or there. It is a pattern: AXA sells protection to ordinary people while secretly underwriting the systems that make us less safe. You are fuelling floods, fires, famine, displacement, and mass killing. You are complicit in both climate collapse and genocide.
The scale of harm you are underwriting is beyond imagination. By continuing to back fossil fuel expansion and war industries, you are actively facilitating conditions that scientists warn will cost billions of lives this century. History will not forget this.
Until you change, I will be boycotting AXA and its sub-brands, and will be spreading the word about your dealings with oil and arms. I can’t stand by and watch our childrens’ future be plundered for profit.
Your sincerely,
Supporter of the Insure Our Survival Coalition
AIG:
To:
IR@aig.com
AIGDirect.Queries@aig.com
Subject:
AIG lead us into a liveable future.
To the executives of AIG,
I am emailing today to implore you to end all underwriting and investment in fossil fuel expansion, arms companies, and institutions complicit in genocide. You have the power to stop this destruction tomorrow - and remain profitable. Yet so far, you choose to bankroll collapse.
You insure and profit from the very “carbon bomb” projects that scientists say will lock the world into deadly warming. You remain one of the top insurers of coal, oil, and gas, covering mines and pipelines that poison water, displace communities, and devastate ecosystems. You insure LNG terminals on the U.S. Gulf Coast — among the most climate-damaging projects on Earth — and you refuse to rule out EACOP, a pipeline that would rip through Uganda and Tanzania, seizing land, uprooting families, and unleashing more emissions than entire nations produce in a year.
You also profit from war. AIG insures companies like Maersk, which transports weapons and military cargo to Israel, enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza. You continue to insure BP and other fossil giants that directly supply the Israeli military. Whether or not you claim “neutrality,” your policies are active enablers of war crimes.
This is not an isolated failure. It is the logic of your business model: selling people safety while underwriting the systems that kill us. You profit from homes and health policies on one hand, while on the other you bankroll fossil expansion and genocide. AIG’s brand is built on a lie — one that endangers us all.
The consequences of your choices are staggering. By continuing to underwrite fossil expansion and Israel’s war economy, you are directly complicit in climate breakdown and genocide. Scientists warn that these projects are setting us on course for billions of deaths this century. The blood and destruction you insure will be remembered.
Until you change, I and my friends and family will boycott AIG and its sub-brands. You are already losing legitimacy. Your name will be synonymous with death unless you act now.
Your Sincerely,
Supporter of the Insure Our Survival Coalition
Take our 2 minute Risky Business Insurance Quiz to discover the facts, and find out why you should get involved.
Poster and flyer your local community or your front window to spread the word. Print and share these posters nd leaflets to get friends, family and neighbours thinking about the campaign.
Spread the message
Hashtags to use:
#InsureOurSurvival
#StopInsuringWeapons
#NoNewFossilFuels
#StopEACOP
#ExtinctionRebellion
#ClimateCriminals
Please also tag
@xrebellionuk @xrdigitalrebel
or if doing local actions also tag relevant groups/ organisation/ people who you think might help amplify your action.
September digital actions
This September we will be sending mass emails, phoning and messaging insurers on social media, to tell them to 'Insure Our Survival'. Details will be updated here!
📱 💻 Wednesday 10th -
Mass phoning + emailing of insurance company (support zoom running from midday)
📱💻Thursday 11th -
Mass phoning + emailing of insurance company (support zoom running from midday)
👁🗨️ Friday 12th -
Contact insurance companies on LinkedIn and social media
📢 Saturday 13th - POSTPONED UNTIL 17th SEP
Amplify the voices of global citizens who are at the frontline of the fight against climate change.
Sign up for Do-It-At-Home action emails. These will tell you about impactful actions you can take from wherever you are, if you can't make it to the actions on the streets.
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