The California mega-fires of the past two weeks have demonstrated that an overheated planet threatens not only people’s lives but also their access to affordable insurance. Yesterday, Covering Climate Now hosted a webinar, “Is Insurance the Next Big Climate Story?,” to give journalists what they need in order to alert audiences to this urgent problem and hold public and private sector officials accountable.
Dave Jones, the former Insurance Commissioner of California, warned that homeowners, renters, taxpayers, and businesses in the US and around the world are at risk. The root of the problem, he said, is climate change and the increasing frequency and severity of the fires, hurricanes, and other extreme events it drives. In an opinion article in yesterday’s New York Times, Jones argued that “the coal, oil, and gas companies that… have known for decades that burning their products could lead to potentially catastrophic events” should be compelled to compensate victims.
Journalists wanting to explore this story needn’t be intimidated by actuarial tables and other complexities of the insurance business. The basics are straightforward, as illustrated by this prescient piece Ben Tracy, CBS News’s former national climate correspondent, aired well before the current California fires.
Property that cannot be insured cannot obtain a mortgage, which risks freezing the housing market. It’s also all but impossible to sell without cutting the price to pennies on the dollar. Since homes are the single largest asset for most households, such slashing of resale values could crash housing markets.
If so-called “climate-insurance bubbles” in California, Florida, and other high-risks areas pop, it could trigger knock-on effects that threaten the global financial system, much as housing bubbles in different countries crashed the global economy in 2008. Martin Arnold and Lee Harris reported in the Financial Times on January 16 that the Financial Stability Board, which was established to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 collapse, has concluded that climate change is “increasingly likely to trigger broader panic in financial markets.”
Climate and insurance is, of course, a story for economics reporters, but it’s also a politics story: The governments of California and Florida have made the public “insurers of last resort,” and the EU and other jurisdictions are considering similar policies. How such programs would work, and whether they are wise, cry out for rigorous follow-up reporting.
Leslie Kaufman of Bloomberg Green and Christopher Flavelle of The New York Times told the webinar audience that a great place to start one’s reporting is with the agencies that regulate the insurance industry. All 50 US states have insurance commissioners; other countries have similar agencies, often at the national level. The deep dives Kaufman and Flavelle and their respective colleagues at Bloomberg and the Times have published are essential preparatory reading.
The climate-insurance crisis is also a justice story. Anita Chabria wrote in her Los Angeles Times column that a business-as-usual approach to rebuilding — valuing speed and cost over safety and sustainability — would both invite more fire damage in the future and push lower-income people out of an already challenging housing market.
Unfortunately, with global CO2 emissions rising faster than ever, there will be plenty of news pegs for climate-insurance stories going forward. Email us at editors@coveringclimatenow.org if CCNow can help.
From Us
“Tell us why the house is burning, too.” Amid the still-burning fires in LA, too much press coverage has ignored the role climate change plays in such disasters — “an inexcusable failure when the scientific link between such mega-fires and a hotter, drier planet is unequivocal,” CCNow co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope argue in a recent Guardian op-ed. Making the climate connection is not just essential, they explain, but also easy to do.
Locally Sourced newsletter. The latest edition of Locally Sourced, CCNow’s biweekly newsletter for local journalists, looks into oceans, which have borne the brunt of human-caused global warming, absorbing nearly 90% of the excess heat generated by greenhouse gas emissions. Check out our Locally Sourced archive and sign up to get it every other Tuesday.
Press Briefing: Climate change and the future of insurance. This week, CCNow hosted a one-hour briefing to explore how news outlets can tackle what promises to be a central, and contentious, part of the climate story going forward. Watch a recording.
Noteworthy Stories
Trump’s return. In the short time since his inauguration, the president has proved a fast champion for the fossil fuel industry, canceling many Biden-era climate policies, halting or stalling wind energy and electric vehicle initiatives, withdrawing for a second time from the Paris Agreement, and much more. The Guardian unpacks Trump’s first steps on energy and what those mean for the climate crisis. By Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor for the Guardian…
Wildfires and climate change. Meteorologist Chase Cain breaks down the two main ways that climate change drives wildfires like the ones in LA. One, hotter air holds more moisture, which dries out the landscape. And two, climate change is leading to extreme swings between wet and dry conditions, resulting in cycles of rapid vegetation growth; that same vegetation effectively becomes kindling. “It’s not that climate change causes a fire,” Cain reports, “but it does allow them to burn much more intensely and spread much more quickly.” For NBC News…
To rebuild or to build differently? In the wake of the LA fires, political leaders have vowed to swiftly restore devastated communities — but many experts would prefer a slower approach, to rethink how communities are built, with hopes of avoiding similar disasters in the future and also addressing long standing inequities. As one architect and University of Southern California professor puts it, “If we just build back the way it was, it’s definitely a missed opportunity.” By Doug Smith for the Los Angeles Times…
When markets react. The world’s top financial stability watchdog warns that mounting incidents of climate disasters could spark panic in financial markets, with pullbacks in lending and dampened investor confidence. By Martin Arnold and Lee Harris for the Financial Times…
Canada abroad. In Ottawa, Canada’s international development minister, Ahmed Hussen, works at the rare intersection of the environment, development, and aid — a role that’s seen him pushing, and sometimes struggling, to integrate climate with all his country’s foreign endeavors, in locations as disparate as Gaza and, recently, California. The Narwhal surveys Hussen’s efforts and hears from him directly on the past, present, and future of Canadian climate action. By Fatima Syed and Carl Meyer for The Narwhal…
If a tree falls in Kashmir. A combination of climate change, urbanization, and neglect are threatening the tall and mighty Chinar tree, an icon and tourism draw in Kashmir. Erratic temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns in the region are disrupting Chinar trees’ natural cycles, one expert explains, “[resulting] in premature leaf drop, poor regeneration, and in some cases, tree mortality.” By Suhail Bhat for IndiaSpend…
Resources, Etc.
Attribution and the LA fires. World Weather Attribution will announce the results of a new study examining the influence of climate change on the LA wildfires on Tuesday, January 28, at 9am US Pacific Time/12pm US Eastern Time. Register for the briefing.
Tracking Trump’s rollbacks. Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law has resources to “keep tabs on Trump-led climate rollbacks and anti-science actions.” These include the Climate Backtracker, to “record Trump administration actions to weaken or eliminate federal climate protections;” the Inflation Reduction Act Tracker, to “track changes in the status of climate programs established via the [IRA];” and the Silencing Science Tracker, “to monitor anti-science actions.”
Federal environmental justice record. The Trump White House is deleting many of the federal government’s environmental justice websites and reports, but various independent groups have those backed up, such as Harvard Law School’s Federal Environmental Justice Tracker.
Science reporting skills. The Open Notebook and SciLine collaborated to deliver a resource series to help journalists sharpen skills that are essential to covering science stories. The series — developed for all journalists, regardless of their science background — includes tips on interviewing scientific sources, parsing scientific studies, finding diverse sources, and more.
Jobs, Opportunities, Etc.
The Washington Post is hiring a Climate Lab reporter/columnist and a democracy editor (Washington, D.C.). Politico’s E&E News is hiring a Congress reporter (Arlington, Va.). The New Republic is hiring a class politics reporter (remote). ProPublica is hiring a climate reporter (multiple locations). The Mountain State Spotlight in West Virginia is hiring an economic justice reporter and a community watchdog reporter (Charleston, W.V.).
Report for America is accepting applications for its 2025–2026 cohort. Corps members will be placed in more than 100 newsrooms, and the environment is among the top beats for which the program is hiring. Applications are due February 3. Learn more and apply.
The Metcalf Institute is accepting applications for its Annual Science Immersion Workshop for Journalists in Rhode Island, from June 8–13. Apply by February 14. Learn more and apply.
The Uproot Project is accepting applications for its 2025 fellowship program, which will provide funding to seven journalists, to support reporting on environmental justice; food, water, and culture; climate solutions; and science. Applications are due March 1. Learn more and apply.
The Club of Rome is accepting applications for its 2025 communications fellowship, which it describes as “a seven-month mentoring program aimed at increasing the diversity of voices covering sustainability issues and supporting early-career communications professionals [including journalists] from Most of the World.” Apply by March 7. Learn more and apply.
Submissions are open for the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists Excellence in Journalism Awards, which honor coverage of issues related to the LGBTQ+ community. In the association’s words, the awards “are open to anyone, including non-members and journalists who do not identify as LGBTQ+.” Early-bird submission pricing ends on February 17, and the final deadline for entries is April 1. Learn more and apply.
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